Carney explores the enormous trade in human body parts—organs, wombs, bones, even human hair—in The Red Market.

Aside from the poverty fueling the trade, are there forces of racism that have kept the trade from being investigated, that see the bodies of certain populations as being expendable?

Human flesh moves up through social classes. It is rare for someone in the developed world to donate a kidney to someone in the developing world. I don’t know if this is imperialism, racism, or just a sad commentary on globalization. And the red market isn’t only an international phenomenon: in the U.S. we have a history of using the bodies of vulnerable populations—from the Tuskegee syphilis experiments to the cultivation of the Henrietta Lacks immortal cell line without her family’s knowledge. The issues are still very present: you don’t see blood plasma collection centers in tony American suburbs—they cluster around populations with low earning power: homeless shelters and college campuses.

You tell the story of an Indian child kidnapped from his family and sold to an adoption agency in the U.S. How were you able to balance your identity as a reporter with your role as advocate for the biological parents?

I took more responsibility than most other reporters would think was appropriate, but I didn’t see that I had much choice. The case had languished in the Indian courts for almost 10 years. When I met Sivagama (the mother) and Nageshwar Rao (the father) in Chennai, I knew that I had to do everything in my power to put them back in touch with their son. I met with FBI and State Department officials to try to get them to collect DNA samples from the child. It took more than a year, but the FBI finally did forward the samples to their Indian counterparts. Last week I heard that there was a positive match. The child is the biological son of Sivagama and Nageshwar Rao. The only question is whether the family in America is going to accept this proof and finally open up a line of communication.

Did any of your subjects—bone traders, blood traffickers, and organ brokers—give you any trouble for exposing their rackets?

The interesting thing about red markets is that everyone along the supply chain sees himself or herself in a positive light; they always talk about how they save lives, bring children into happy homes, or provide necessary materials for scientific study. My job was to see through the rhetoric and take a long hard look at what was really going on.

You propose exposing the supply chain. How do you see this being implemented?

The worst offenses I’ve witnessed have only come about because the transactions happen behind closed doors. Every time someone sells, transplants, or moves a piece of human tissue from one body to another, there should be a record. Right now only a handful of people are able to look at official records, and most of them don’t have any vested interest in rooting out problems in the system. If we put the power back into the hands of the public, then their outrage at kidnappings, grave robbing, blood farming, and organ trafficking should be enough to expose the worst perpetrators.