Organ Markets in Shadowrun

[Username17]

There was some discussion recently about the Tanamous organization, and the secondary market for human organs in general. And that's reasonable, because harvesting people for their organs is creepy. But let's be real here: organ harvesters make an appearance in Shadowrun because they are creepy, not because there is really any reason to do it.

The Shadowrun future history has had universally implantable organs grown in vats since the 2040s. And of course, lest we forget: the entire Type Owen thing was something I wrote up for Augmentation to make some sense out of the rather poor biology from the old 1989 book that talked flippantly about implanting Type O organs into people willy nilly. And that means that the market for stolen organs just wouldn't exist.

I Need a Kidney...

The first thing to understand about the black market in kidneys that exists today is the demand. People are willing to trade kidneys on the black market because there are people who want them and are willing to pay for them. This is because there are people who have kidney failure for any of a number of reasons, and every week they go without kidneys is a week they have to spend three days or more hooked up to dialysis machines for several hours. They want kidney replacements, because it gives them better quality of life, a longer life, and more freedom for several years. Yes, several years. Because on average a transplanted kidney will stop working in about seven years. A child with kidney failure would hope to go through ten kidneys or more over their lifetime.

Unfortunately, they will never have that chance. People are on waiting lists for kidneys, because even giving just one kidney to each deserving patient (remember: many organ donors give two kidneys), the demand is much higher than the supply. Not just in an "It's a seller's market" sort of way, but that literally the number of kidney years available for all donor kidneys on Earth does not equal the remaining life expectancy of all the kidney transplant hopefuls. There exists a form of rationing therefore, where children spend a few years waiting for a kidney and then they get one for about seven years until it wears out and then they go back to waiting.

So it's not surprising that people would be willing to pay big money to go to countries like the United States, where you can get yourself bumped up in waiting list by throwing money at the problem. Heck, it's not surprising that people would be willing to take bribes to alter the kidney waiting lists in countries where buying a slot on the list isn't explicitly possible. And of course, it's not surprising that people would make individual transactions where they pay money to get a kidney right out of a live person.

Now, donating a kidney while you're alive is a big deal. It reduces your life expectancy and costs you future income. People are really only willing to do that sort of thing in countries where their future economic prospects are pretty bleak. Which is why you can get a new kidney from a living donor for twenty thousand Euros from Moldova or Egypt, but not from the UK or Sweden.

So I Got This Kidney...

Donor kidneys frankly suck. First of all, they've been exposed to who knows what kind of trauma. People have been drinking alcohol and paint thinner and whatever else for a lifetime before you get your hands on one of the damn things, and then you carved it out of the donor (who may well have died already) and transport it around, and blah blah blah. Those things are seriously fragged when inserted, and usually undergo severe necrosis before recovering some level of functionality. Sometimes they don't even take and just die, making the whole thing a waste.

And then there's the matching. Which is to say: unless you're getting a kidney from an identical twin (and possibly even then), the new kidney doesn't match. After getting your new kidney, you'll need to take immunosuppressors for as long as you keep the kidney. Which makes you more vulnerable to infections and all that entails. And of course: won't be enough to actually keep the kidney going indefinitely anyway. Sooner or later, the implanted kidney will fail. And on average that will be about seven years from now. And when that day comes, you're back to square one. Remember: immunosuppressants are not cheap and are incredibly unpleasant. But I'm told it beats having needles jabbed into your abdomen while you sleep so that a machine can power wash your intestines. Which is seriously the other option.

Clonal is Better

You would rather get a clonal kidney out of a vat than get one from a cadaver or a starving Moldovan. You would rather get one because it would last a lot longer, because you wouldn't have to poison yourself to keep it from being rejected, because it would work better and improve your life more. If you could get a kidney cloned from your own DNA or even pre-cloned as a "Type O" variant, you would take that over a kidney from a real person. Hell, you'd take it over ten such kidneys, because that is your actual choice.

But even if that wasn't an option, even if the kidney out of the vat was just a random kidney grown at normal speed so that it was basically just a child's kidney from some random dude, that would still be a superior option. The child's kidney is a lot less broken than an adult's kidney. The kidney starts with way more nephrons than it needs, and they gradually get destroyed over the lifetime. And the shock of transplantation and the trauma of surviving in a hostile body really does tear those nephrons down pretty hard. A new blank slate kidney would actually last longer.

But the thing is: Shadowrun does have clonal vat grown versions. Those dream kidneys that don't make you sick and last for sixty years? Yeah, it has those. Out of a vat.

Why Steal?

So where does that leave organ legging in the Shadowrun future? Well, basically nowhere. For buying a black market kidney to be viable, the cost of ten of them, plus a lifetime supply of immunosuppressors has to be less than the cost of just getting the Cadillac model off the rack at Doc-in-the-Box. And then for the market to exist to buy out of, the money you're forking over for these incredibly shitty products still has to be enough to get people to commit crimes over. And that's... kind of silly.

In SR, you can get a Type O kidney for ¥6000. That's less than the annual cost of the immunosuppressive drugs required to keep a shoddy stolen kidney from being rejected. Economically, if someone were to offer you a stolen kidney, they would have to pay you money to get you to accept it - since it would cost you more money to maintain the damn thing than to have a clonal version that worked better, lasted longer, and involved less skeazy repercussions installed instead.

There's a reason that in Augmentation, Kane announces that an entire body can net him a couple hundred nuyen from a ripper doc or a ghoul meal den. Not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, just a couple hundred actual nuyen. For the whole thing. Because those organs are worth literally nothing except as research material or food.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

At that rate, you'd get more money off of someone from knocking them out, stealing their clothes and gear, and pawning it off. It's also probably a lot SAFER, too, because mugging someone as opposed to selling them for food you don't need to maintain possession of them or hide them or deal with ghouls.

Really, it seems like only retards would actually grab people and sell their organs; it's more than twice the work and danger of mugging and pays a lot less.



Actually, Frank, what's the profit margin on hunting down geared-up street samurais and chopping up their bodies for cyberware? You'd actually have to be pretty badass in order to do that, since your victims are going to be ultra-awesome, but how profitable would you think it'd be for a team of street samurais to keep an eye on cyberwares clinics and 'arrange' to get them to a ripper doc if they come out of there walking with more than 50,000 nuyen in hardware?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Couldn't we make up some bullshit where arms, legs, eyes, and whatnot taken off real-live people can be used in making cheaper more essence friendly realistic cyber-replacements? Replace cyber-zombies with cyber-frankensteins.

Then come up with some more bullshit about how you perform some quick retroviral gene therapy on the replacement to avoid rejection. Or say that local immunosuppressants have been invented and are slow-released at the organ's interface with the body. With realistic cyberlimbs you don't even need a direct interface between the donor and recipient flesh.

Sure, it's all bullshit, but if I have to put up with elves in a cyberpunk game I'm damn' well going to have my organleggers!

[Lago PARANOIA]

I dunno, organ harvesting never really felt like part of cyberpunk to me.

To me, cyberpunk screams more like 'you lost your organ as part of pollution / violence / drugs / hard living so we'll give you a mechanical replacement'. So you have a hard-drinking veteran who lost their left arm in the war and their right leg to Type 1 diabetes--so the quick-thinking doc gave them cyberlimbs. The leg comes up with a built-in dialysis machine, which explains the bulge at their hips, but otherwise Ex-Corporal Sheila is 'fine'. Sticking stolen human organs in people is actually kind of gauche when you could get a kickass robot replacement.

[Username17]

Actually, Frank, what's the profit margin on hunting down geared-up street samurais and chopping up their bodies for cyberware? You'd actually have to be pretty badass in order to do that, since your victims are going to be ultra-awesome, but how profitable would you think it'd be for a team of street samurais to keep an eye on cyberwares clinics and 'arrange' to get them to a ripper doc if they come out of there walking with more than 50,000 nuyen in hardware?

According to Glenn Swayne

You can get 5% of the cost of a transplantable piece of cyberware by selling it to a ripper doc. That means anything that is Beta Grade or higher, anything that is "Cultured Ware" and anything that is distributed through the body like Bone Lacing or Wired Reflexes is worth nothing, and everything else sells for 5%.

Couldn't we make up some bullshit where arms, legs, eyes, and whatnot taken off real-live people can be used in making cheaper more essence friendly realistic cyber-replacements? Replace cyber-zombies with cyber-frankensteins.

You could come up with some sort of use for the Essence of people, sure.

Mostly the only thing Tanamous has that seems to have legs financially is in hiding bodies from other peoples' crimes, making people disappear, supplying wendigos with live victims, and crafting designer children for rich perverts. All that stuff is viable. But without some sort of magical technique for doing something with stolen organs, there really isn't any point to stealing organs itself. Stealing organs is just a front: a scary story they tell people to hide their assassination work as random ritualistic street violence.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Why only 5%?

[Lago PARANOIA]

5%? Fuck that. That means that the best case scenario you can get for mugging some newly-minted street samurai with 50,000 nuyen worth of equipment is 2,500. And that's for razorbois who have that amount of cash to plop down.

Why is the return on cyberware so small? Is it just because there isn't much of a demand for alphaware in the first place? That's not too hard to believe, since betaware is only slightly more expensive so only the most desperate of people will settle for alphaware. Who aren't known for having phat wads of cash in the first place.

[Crissa]

Well, medical prosthesis often lose alot of value once you take it out of the box. You lose the plastic sheeting that was keeping it sterile. The contacts and leads are all now tarnished. You've trimmed the flanges and who knows what bacteria are now hiding in it.

So not only will someone be willing to pay less for refurbished goods, you're going to have to refurbish it. And then hope someone wants that particular part. And all these parts have identifier chips and serial numbers on them, which you're going to have to do something about.

-Crissa

[mean_liar]

Anything meant to interface with a human body is going to be able to handle some tarnishing.

[Fuchs]

We don't use organleggers in our Shadowrun game for that reason. That, and I hate the concept of Tanamous as some uber-underworld organisation reaching everywhere.

[K]

I always thought organ-legging in Shadowrun was in bioware organs.

On a tangent, why don't they implant Critter organs?

[CatharzGodfoot]

On a tangent, why don't they implant Critter organs?

I.e. Jackie 'Dragonheart' might actually have a dragon's heart? Neat idea. They might come with weird allergies, like to acetaminophen.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Harvesting bioware organs makes even less sense than harvesting real ones, since they're specifically tailored towards working with the host. So first of all you need to find people who can afford bioware, second of all you need to find someone who actually wants what you're selling, and third of all you still have all of the immunosurpression/organ degradation problems Frank mentioned earlier.

Unless you really need a cheap year-long fix whereupon you're going to go on a death-or-glory run or you're borrowing the time trying to afford enough money to get a REAL bioware organ there's no need to get the knockoff. And there-in lies the problem; if you are planning on throwing away your life or don't have a choice in the matter to get yourself a new lung in two months, why would you get bioware?

You could get... cyberware. Which will keep you alive for longer. Which is cheaper. I can see a market for harvested cyberware, but harvested bioware? Not a chance.

[Josh_Kablack]

But I'm told it beats having needles jabbed into your abdomen while you sleep

For most folks here in 2010, the needle goes in the arm.

And only somewhere around half of them are able to sleep during hemodialysis. That may be due to the physical effects of procedure itself or the noise and bustle at most dialysis centers.

Furthermore a significant number of patients find the experience so exhausting that they are unable to resume normal function for the rest of the day afterwards.

If we're looking at sci-fi kidney replacement, options that are likely to happen before vatgrown clonal kidneys would include better/cheaper home dialysis units, and geneengineered flukes used as targeted immunosurpressent delivery systems.

[CatharzGodfoot]

You could get... cyberware. Which will keep you alive for longer. Which is cheaper. I can see a market for harvested cyberware, but harvested bioware? Not a chance.

The distinction is dumb in the first place. Some items make sense having no living components, and others don't make sense with nonbiological parts. Most cyberware fits somewhere between the two extremes. The distinction is just an excuse to write two nearly identical entries for every piece of cyberware and add some extra bookkeeping math.

Also, SR bioware doesn't have rejection issue thanks to the 'type O' thing Frank mentioned.

[Username17]

Why only 5%?

Because you are selling it to a ripper doc who extracts it. He sells it to a factory warehouse that refurbishes it. They sell it to another street doc. That street doc sells it to some up and coming razorboy as used cyberware. Second hand cyberware costs half as much to the final recipient.

Seriously, what the fuck did you think you were getting? The final purchase is four hands later, and even that one is only 50%. Plus, you're the only one on that whole list who can't easily shop around, since you have a fucking dead body in a bag.

I always thought organ-legging in Shadowrun was in bioware organs.

Pretty much. A "used" Type O organ is actually "still alive" and is no different from one right out of the vat. Or rather, it will be once you've cleaned it of all the first owner's blood. Any cultured or high grade bioware organ is gene typed to the recipient, and would be less than useless for any new recipient and is worth nothing save for research or food. But basic off-the-rack bioware can be dialyzed and resold even by the ripperdoc who pulled it out in the first place - since it's a live organ and doesn't need a factory to install new connective microcircuitry.

On a tangent, why don't they implant Critter organs?

Because this happens.

Xeno transplants are incredibly hard. We use pig valves because we can clean them off real good. We don't implant growing pig tissue because that would be attacked by the human immune system.

A lot of bioware is based on critter organs. You genetically engineer something to have the internal cell workings of something awesome like clam musculature and yet still have the surface of human cells.

For most folks here in 2010, the needle goes in the arm.

And only somewhere around half of them are able to sleep during hemodialysis. That may be due to the physical effects of procedure itself or the noise and bustle at most dialysis centers.

I was actually referring to Peritoneal Dialysis.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

I was actually referring to Peritoneal Dialysis.

I knew that.

However I seem to have been mistaken in my assumption that Hemo was more common, for which I apologize.

[Ganbare Gincun]

However I seem to have been mistaken in my assumption that Hemo was more common, for which I apologize.

I was under this impression as well. But neither procedure is pleasant. Although I am not exactly the picture of perfect health, reading about dialysis has made me appreciate just how bad things could really be.

Frank - are there any promising treatments on the horizon for those that have kidney failure short of cloning kidneys for people?

[Username17]

However I seem to have been mistaken in my assumption that Hemo was more common, for which I apologize.

I was under this impression as well. But neither procedure is pleasant. Although I am not exactly the picture of perfect health, reading about dialysis has made me appreciate just how bad things could really be.

Frank - are there any promising treatments on the horizon for those that have kidney failure short of cloning kidneys for people?

Kidneys aren't just selective filters, although that is their most dramatic function. They also create and secrete things. They can make Ammonium and use it to reduce acidity in the blood. They produce EPO and Vitamin D, which in turn causes your body to make blood cells and absorb calcium respectively. Those can be replaced by simply injecting/consuming them. So kidney failure doesn't have to be associate with anemia and osteoporosis any more.

The filters and fluids we use aren't exactly the same as the kidney and they are not as good. The kidney reabsorbs certain things the body needs and secretes things it doesn't. Maintains a better ion and nutrition balance than dialysis alone does. So we can adjust filtration and feeding to an extent to cover that.

But then there's some stuff that isn't very clear. No Kidneys means no regulation of Aldosterone levels, which has some deleterious effects on neuron healing.

So the long story short is: people who have dialysis bags instead of replacement kidneys live sicker, shorter lives. And while we are doing some stuff to improve those conditions, the clonal kidney replacement is the end result we're working towards. It doesn't seem weird to predict that we can have those online in twenty years. Probably grown in transgenic pigs.

It's not like Pancreases, where you really can fully replace the organ simply by taking digestive enzyme pills and insulin with every meal (you don't need Glucagon to live, and Somatostatin will be produced in ample amounts by your GIT if your pancreatic production falls to zero).

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

But without some sort of magical technique for doing something with stolen organs, there really isn't any point to stealing organs itself.

magical

This is Shadowrun. How much space would a 'refurbish organ' spell cost? Of course, at that point, you're adding in the cost of employing highly skilled specialist labor, i.e., a medical mage, but a 'refurbish stolen organ' spell has to be easier for washed out low-Essence/Magic mages to cast than a 'regenerate busted organ' spell.

[mean_liar]

Why only 5%?

Because you are selling it to a ripper doc who extracts it. He sells it to a factory warehouse that refurbishes it. They sell it to another street doc. That street doc sells it to some up and coming razorboy as used cyberware. Second hand cyberware costs half as much to the final recipient.

Seriously, what the fuck did you think you were getting? The final purchase is four hands later, and even that one is only 50%. Plus, you're the only one on that whole list who can't easily shop around, since you have a fucking dead body in a bag.

That's just handwaving and making shit up, though.

By the book: Street Costs, p303. Stolen, used, from a crime = -50%.

Distribution Channels Monopolized, +20%. Not a given but a possibility for military ware and increasingly so for higher grades of 'ware.
Law Enforcement Crackdown on Item, +50%. Highly probable this is relevant.

So for high-end stuff you're looking at selling it for higher than it's base price due to difficulties in shadowrunners being able to acquire the gear.


But, if you wanted to walk it through with a little more detail, let's just get it into the hands of the Fence and walk it from there:

Extraction is surgery where the patient is the ware, not the host. Augmentation p127 lays out that getting shit implanted is a matter of between a few hours to up to some intense three-day surgery for deltaware. Let's just deal with up to Alphaware to keep the discussion revolving around typical gear. So, that's a day's surgery. Even at an Elite Shadow Clinic you're spending $4000 for one day's intensive care. However, at beta-grade and lower most cyberware can be taken care of at a private hospital for $1000 in a day.

Refurbishing and distribution is based on Repair, which for most 'ware is going to be a 1-hour interval on an Extended test. Neuroshit is Consuming at 1-day. They'll hit that interval within a day for most 'ware (and a week for neuroshit). A day's work isn't a percentage markup, it's "here's $1000 to clean this thing up", not "you get 10% of the original $50k pricetag on this".

The buyer bears the costs of installation in the gear cost, so the installer recoups costs on that end from the purchaser.

Cleaned and refurbished for $2k, not 45% of it's original value.

Betaware requires days of qualified technician time to custom-fit but it still only requires a private hospital for $5k, and then the refurbishing is probably a week for another $5k, so that's a $10k-$15k hit.

[Username17]

So for high-end stuff you're looking at selling it for higher than it's base price due to difficulties in shadowrunners being able to acquire the gear.

So... you think that used ware should sell for more than it can be sold to implant by a factor of more than double? That's retarded.

That's just handwaving and making shit up, though.

By the book:

By the core book, there are no rules for scooping out cyberware at all. Those are "advanced" rules in Augmentation. And Augmentation says that when you turn in cyberware to a ripper doc, he gives you 5%.

The rules for Second Hand cyberware aren't in the basic book either. Those are also in Augmentation, and those say that when you get Second Hand Ware implanted, it costs half normal.

Seriously, those are on page 15 and 32 of the book respectively.

This is Shadowrun. How much space would a 'refurbish organ' spell cost? Of course, at that point, you're adding in the cost of employing highly skilled specialist labor, i.e., a medical mage, but a 'refurbish stolen organ' spell has to be easier for washed out low-Essence/Magic mages to cast than a 'regenerate busted organ' spell.

Sure. I could see some kind of magic that would turn one person's organ into another person's organ. Why not? It's magic. Plus, you aren't creating anything or changing gross features particularly. I could see people organ harvesting for that. You kill some dude and take their organs, and then you transmute them into other peoples' organs and sell them as cultured clonal replacements for 9k a piece. That could be a viable business model.

Get a leg up on the competition (so to speak) because it takes you less than 3 weeks to get the organ grown. Heck, maybe you charge 12k or so and claim it's a proprietary force growth technique. Then if it turns out that there is some alcoholic liver damage or some shit, you blame it on the forced growth techniques and offer them a replacement.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

Would a souped up version of Sterilize that clears out all biological contamination be enough to make cyberware "ready to go"? Or does it still need to go back to the factory for all sorts of new connecty parts?

[mean_liar]

So for high-end stuff you're looking at selling it for higher than it's base price due to difficulties in shadowrunners being able to acquire the gear.

So... you think that used ware should sell for more than it can be sold to implant by a factor of more than double? That's retarded.

No, it's the premium you pay to not have to make the stupid-high Availability Roll. That's only for extreme, high-end things that are under a crackdown with limited availability.

If the Fence has it and he's available and there are no other avenues, then yes, it's worth more than book price because he can sell for more than book price.

That's just handwaving and making shit up, though.

By the core book, there are no rules for scooping out cyberware at all. Those are "advanced" rules in Augmentation. And Augmentation says that when you turn in cyberware to a ripper doc, he gives you 5%.

The rules for Second Hand cyberware aren't in the basic book either. Those are also in Augmentation, and those say that when you get Second Hand Ware implanted, it costs half normal.

Seriously, those are on page 15 and 32 of the book respectively.

For a guy that entirely rewrote the Matrix rules you seem to have a pretty arbitrary sense of when to rewrite and when to keep the rules. Unless you wrote that section of Augmentation.

Based on what can be picked together from the reasonable costs of work involved in cyberware reclamation, refurbishing and implantation should pay out a LOT higher than 5%, fluff text notwithstanding.

[Crissa]

Well, also remember you're getting paid 5% in lieu of paying to dispose of the body, which in legal channels, is expensive.

-Crissa