My friend and I were planning to visit a foreign country. Do

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It would make for a good horror film, but this urban legend is not true. Though there are kidney thefts going around, these are not targeting foreign tourists. The email and viral tales are quite convincing, but there have been no reports from victims of this crime. Because of that, such cases have not been confirmed. If it was so widespread as the emails would have you believe, at least one victim should have come out by now. But that is not the case here. Probably, this is just another urban legend meant to give people a good scare, especially tourists.

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Traveling to a foreign country does entail certain risks and dangers, but that does not include kidney theft. Though it�s possible that such things exist, they are not confirmed as of yet. So you need not worry too much about it. There are cases of syndicates involved in illegal organ acquisitions, but there have been no confirmed cases involving tourists being targeted specifically. The usual tales are about organ buying and stealing from poor and uneducated people. And these cases always happen in third world countries, where the poor are exploited. In first world countries, no such case is documented by authorities.

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I've seen this myth so many times and everybody that looks at it agrees it's bogus. Bigger lie than the toothbrush up the butt.

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When you think about it, having your kidney stolen is a terrible thing to happen. Although most of these cases occur in underdeveloped nations, where crime syndicates exploit the poor and even use violence to extract organs from the living and the dead, how can we be sure that tourists won't be the next targets? With the growing market for kidneys, it won't be too impossible. Tourists are likely targets because they don't know much about the place or sometimes don't know people in the places they're visiitng. The reason there are no reported victims could be because they're already dead. People who need kidney can pay as much as they can just to get the needed extension to their lives.

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Well, there was a case of organized kidney theft in India, but the victims are not foreigners or tourists. The profile of the victims are usually the poor and uneducated, and the means of getting the organs are either through buying them or drugging the patient and getting the kidneys without consent. It is a serious problem in India, but there are no reports of foreigners or tourists being included in the list of victims. There is even less evidence that these groups specifically target foreign travelers or tourists. Believing in this rumor is just scaring yourself needlessly during your travel.

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