Organ Transplants in China, Among Other Things

Daniel Asa Rose has published his book entitled Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black -Sheep Cousin and His Mail Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant … and Save His Life (William Morrow 2009).

The book’s website provides an excellent summary of this book on “medical tourism”:

Larry Feldman desperately needed a kidney. After two god-awful years on dialysis, watching his life ebb away while waiting on a transplant list behind 74,000 other Americans, the gun-toting couch potato decided to risk everything and travel to China, the controversial kingdom of organ transplants. But Larry urgently needed his cousin Daniel’s help … even though they had been on the outs with each other for years.
 
Sure, Chinese law forbids transplants to Westerners, but that didn’t faze Larry. He was confident he could shake out a single, pre-loved kidney from the country’s 1.3 billion people. But wait: Larry was never one to not get his money’s worth. Since he was already shelling out for a trip to China, he decided to make it a twofer: he arranged to pick up an (e-)mail-order bride while he was at it. After a tireless search of the Internet, he already knew the woman he wanted.
 
Backed by a quarter-million-dollar disability settlement (was it the icicle falling on his head or the truck rear-ending him?) and armed with an all-purpose letter of recommendation from a devoted nun, Larry journeyed to Beijing on an unlikely search for life and love in the most cryptic country on earth. Conflicted about the ethical issues surrounding medical tourism, and with no time to cultivate even a single Chinese contact, Daniel left the next day, on his own dime.

So begins the quest of two star-crossed cousins to rejuvenate Larry’s failing body and ever-romantic heart, while avoiding getting tossed in a Chinese slammer. An unforgettable adventure filled with Red Guards who waltz at midnight and former enemies who prove more true than family, Larry’s Kidney is being called “the funniest yet most heartwarming book of the year.”