Doctors Arrested for Faking Infants' Deaths to Sell Them

Three doctors and one nurse were arrested just outside of Mexico City yesterday for a child trafficking operation that involved fabricating the deaths of newborns and then selling the babies on the black market for profit. Whether the children were sold to parents desperate for a child or for more nefarious purposes is not yet clear. Nor is whether any of the infants were trafficked into the U.S.

What kind of sick and heartless beasts came up with this strategy? Did it start around the water cooler like this:

Evil Doctor 1: Hey, I'd love to make some money to supplement my doctor's salary, which is not quite enough to buy those jet skis. Anyone got any ideas?

Evil Doctor 2: Well, we've got all these babies just lying around the hospital, why don't we try selling some of them?

Evil Nurse: Who wants to buy a baby? Babies are expensive to take care of.

Evil Doctor 2: Oh, lots of people want to buy babies for all sorts of reasons.

Some couples who can't have children on their own get so desperate and frustrated with the adoption system, that they're willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a baby on the black market. Other people buy babies to use them as slaves, abuse them sexually, or harvest their organs.

Evil Doctor 3: But what about the women who come into the hospital to have these children? Won't they wonder what happened to their children?

Evil Doctor 2: We'll tell them their babies are died once we took them to get cleaned up, and if they want to see the body, we'll tell them we already cremated it.

Evil Doctor 3: But won't the mothers be upset that we cremated their dead babies' bodies before talking to them? Won't they try and sue us or something?

Evil Nurse: Come on, this isn't America! Besides, we'll just target poor women without a lot of resources or family support. That way it will be harder for them to try and say something.

Evil Doctor 1: Great ideas, everyone. Now let's start faking the deaths of infants, lying to their grieving mothers, and then selling the babies to the highest bidder, no matter how unscrupulous. This is a good plan and there is no way we'll ever get caught.

Fortunately, the doctors and nurse who developed this trafficking scheme did get caught. They were discovered selling an infant whose mother was told her child died shortly after being born to another woman for $15,000 pesos, or about $1300. Additionally, police discovered that a married couple had paid the hospital to falsify birth records for the child they purchased. This case is another sad example of the ease with which poor women and their children are exploited for profit.

Photo credit: Jorge Ravines Fotografias