- Iranians are selling their organs on Telegram in the face of harsh economic realities.
- Insider reviewed Telegram listings showing people selling their livers, corneas, and testicles.
- Many of the listings said they were selling their organs to pay off debts or to avoid bankruptcy.
Insider has reviewed dozens of messages on the Telegram app, widely used in Iran, which appear to show impoverished Iranians advertising a range of organs for sale, with many citing debts and risk of bankruptcy as their reasoning for making such dramatic decisions.
Selling kidneys is legal in Iran, unlike in other countries, but transactions are regulated and the sale of other organs is forbidden.
However, messages reviewed by Insider — of which there are hundreds — appear to show a booming online black market of people selling everything from their livers to their bone marrow.
Perhaps the most shocking sales pitch is from a man advertising his testicles for sale. That listing read: "Selling testicles, 25 years old, blood type O+, left or right testicle (doesn't matter), I am selling because of debt."
Another listing also advertised testicles for sale, with the man offering to travel to nearby cities for the transplant surgery for the right price.
The listings appear on three separate Telegram channels, and follow a similar format: the organ for sale, the gender of the intended donor, their blood type, the proposed price, a location, and a brief overview of their medical history.
One 33-year-old man listed himself as selling his stem cells, bone marrow, and the corneas of his eyes, adding that he is doing so "due to financial problems and bankruptcy."
Another individual, 31, listed his liver for sale for 900 million Iranian Rials, the equivalent of $21,301.78.
How many of these sales or transplants have gone through is unclear, but Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, John J. Kuiper Chair in Nephrology and Renal Transplantation at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told Insider he finds the whole thing beyond belief.
He added: "You don't take corneas from living people, I can't believe you would do that."
Iran is the only country in the world where it is legal to exchange an organ for money. It can only be a kidney, and it must be done in coordination with a government foundation, with limits on the compensation offered.
Nonetheless, sellers and donors regularly circumvent the legally-approved process, opting instead for potentially more profitable under-the-table deals, according to a 2022 study in the journal Transplant International.
It's also illegal for kidneys to be sold outside of Iran because this would amount to organ trafficking, or even to non-Iranians in Iran.
But according to Iran International, desperate Iranians have been going to Iraq to sell their kidneys, and others are being led by middlemen to travel to the United Arab Emirates and Turkey to sell other body parts.
It's unclear from the Telegram messages whether these listings, which appear in Farsi, the Iranian language, are targeted at international clients or Iranians.
According to Karmel Melamed, an Iranian-American journalist, it's not a new phenomenon for Iranians to circumvent the official avenues to sell their kidneys, nor is it unheard of for people to sell other organs. What's changed, he said, is how the economy appears to be making it more common.
"The only difference between the situation today and in the past is that the economic situation is worse today in Iran because of the rampant corruption and hyperinflation caused by the Ayatollah regime there," Melamed told Insider.
He added that the struggling economy in Iran has led to much of the population being unable to afford food or household staples, leading some to decide to "sell their organs to feed themselves and their families."
Iran has one of the highest inflation rates in the world, with economic forecasts anticipating hyperinflation in the coming months.
The economy has been hammered by COVID-19, international sanctions, as well as by corruption. And the poorest are suffering particularly, with the cost of many food items going up more than 50% since mid-2022.
Beni Sabti, who was born in Tehran and is a researcher into Iranian social networks at The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said financial hardships were forcing poorer Iranians to do anything to stay afloat.
"You cannot believe how the economic situation is that bad in Iran," he told Insider. "Iranians make this very bad compromise with the regime, with their lives, and they are ready to sell their organs to live another day."
