Kidneys From the Twilight Zone

You need a kidney transplant.

You don't have insurance.

You don't have $25,000 to $150,000 to cover the cost of a transplant.

What do you do?

Go to India.

India and other Asian countries have become a hot spot for inexpensive medical treatment. They treat a wide range of medical conditions for as little as 20% of the cost of similar procedures in the United States.

But just where did they get the harvested kidney?

Three weeks ago, Mohammad Saleem, 33, agreed to work at a construction site in this bustling city near New Delhi. A house painter with an extended family of eight, he was drawn here by the promise of an extra dollar in his daily wage. After a few days of waiting in a blue-and-white bungalow for work to begin, Saleem said, he was forcibly anesthetized by two masked men.

"When I woke up after several hours, I felt a pain in my right side," Saleem recalled, sitting on a metal cot in a city hospital ward. "The men said, 'We have removed your kidney, and you better not breathe a word about it.' My life broke into pieces when I heard that."

You just entered, the Twilight Zone . . .