Body alchemy -- The bone factory -- Kidney prospecting -- Meet the parents -- Immaculate conception -- Cash on delivery -- Blood money -- The clinical labor of guinea pigs -- Immortal promises -- Black gold

A shocking tour through a macabre global underworld where organs, bones, and live people are bought and sold on the red market. Investigative journalist Scott Carney has spent five years tracing the lucrative and deeply secretive trade in human bodies and body parts. The Red Market reveals the rise, fall, and resurgence of this multibillion-dollar underground trade through history, from early medical study and modern universities to poverty-ravaged Eurasian villages and high-tech Western labs; from body snatchers and surrogate mothers to skeleton dealers and the poor who sell body parts to survive. While local and international law enforcement have cracked down on the market, advances in science have increased the demand for human tissue--ligaments, kidneys, even rented space in women's wombs--leaving little room to consider the ethical dilemmas inherent in the flesh-and-blood trade.--From publisher description