TORONTO - Latin American refugees living in Toronto are trying to sell their organs for transplants -- a sign that a black market in human body parts may be emerging in Canada.

Three roommates from Central America placed a cryptic advertisement this month in a Spanish-language newspaper, Compra y Venta, offering to donate their kidneys. More than a dozen people responded.

When a National Post reporter posing as a buyer met with one, a 28-year-old refugee claimant, he offered to travel to a U.S. clinic and undergo a transplant if his expenses were paid and he received US$50,000 after the operation.

"There is a risk, I know, but I am prepared to take it," acknowledged the man, who said he needed the money to pay for a bone marrow transplant for a relative back home. "In Central America, people ... are too religious and it would be considered a sin. But I believe that if Jesus Christ had to sell a kidney, he would."

His 37-year-old relative, now a Canadian citizen, told an undercover reporter he would travel to a U.S. clinic and pose as a distant relative of the recipient. He requested expenses and US$75,000 to compensate him for the organ, time off work and future health risk.

An illicit organ trade, especially in kidneys, has grown for the past decade because a shortage of organs from dead donors has lengthened waiting lists for transplant operations. With friends, not just relatives, becoming donors, it is getting more difficult to prevent the use of cash inducements.

The purchase and sale of organs is illegal in most countries, including Canada and the United States, because of concern that it commercializes the body, exploits the poor, dissuades altruistic donors and motivates criminals to murder for profit.

Transplant agencies have documented cases of Canadians going to the Philippines, Taiwan, China and India to buy organs, but said this was the first time they had solid evidence indicating organ trafficking within Canada.

"It is certainly a frightening thought that it could be happening here," said Bill Barrable, chief executive officer of the British Columbia Transplant Society.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of medical anthropology at Berkeley University and director of Organ Watch, a centre that investigates organ trafficking, said: "It may seem strange to us, but there are plenty of people who are willing to sell their organs. I've come across cases in the last year in North America. I've spoken to heads of transplant centres in Boston, New York and Los Angeles who say there is a kind of policy today of don't ask, don't tell."

The advertisement in the Toronto newspaper said three kidney donors were available and gave two e-mail addresses to contact for information.

The man who met with the Post reporter said the idea of selling a kidney scares him, but he is willing to undergo the procedure because he is desperate for the money. Although considered major surgery, the risk of complication to a healthy donor is relatively small.

He said he is the only family member able to help his relative back home who needs a bone-marrow transplant. "If I could borrow the money to help my relative I would. But I can't," said the man, who appeared nervous. "It is something sad and in my situation is very complicated. My wife does not agree with this, but she is supporting me."

He, his relative and their roommate, a 31-year-old refugee claimant, hatched the plan after reading about Camilo Sandoval, an infant from Vancouver who received a liver transplant in New York after the prospective donor said she didn't want the procedure performed at a Canadian hospital. The episode persuaded the three Latin Americans that there are people desperate enough to pay for organs.

The demographic profile of the sellers -- newly arrived, undocumented migrants in financial straits -- is typical, Ms. Scheper-Hughes said. "They are not the most desperately poor, but people who have been caught by the accumulation of debt and are feeling pressured." Many say they need the money for altruistic reasons, which is not necessarily the case, but makes their plan more socially palatable.

The man who met with the Post said political violence forced him to flee his homeland in Central America last May.

He said he left his wife and children behind and paid a smuggler US$4,000 to take him to the Mexico-U.S. border.

He made his way to Houston and boarded a bus to Fort Erie, Ont. He then moved in with his Canadian relative and began working at a construction site. He is barred from leaving Canada until his refugee claim is decided, but said he would be prepared to cross the border into the United States illegally and pose as a relative of the organ recipient. He suggested Mexican associates in Toronto would lend him their identity documents.

Canada's provinces have all enacted legislation banning the sale and purchase of organs, but it has not been criminalized and a violation carries a maximum penalty of just six months imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. It is also illegal in the United States, but debate is continuing. At a recent meeting of the American Societies of Transplantation, some experts supported the development of regulatory agencies to oversee organ sales, although others did not condone the practice.

There are 4,000 Canadians on wait lists for all organs, and that number is expected to double by 2005. Patients are increasingly relying on living donors for kidney transplants, which usually account for half of all transplant operations.

At the Toronto General Hospital, the country's largest transplant centre, kidney patients -- many of whom can live on dialysis but often favour kidney transplants to enhance their lives -- must wait four years for a kidney from a cadaver.

All transplant centres rigorously screen living donors to ensure they are not being coerced or paid for their organs. In B.C., two or three prospective donors are turned away each year due to concerns they are selling organs. At Toronto General, donors have been refused for the same reason.

"I can't guarantee you no money is changing hands ... but we make every effort," said Colleen Shilton, clinical nurse specialist with the transplant program at the Toronto General.

More than half the centre's annual 100 kidney transplants are from living donors, and half of these are spouses, friends or neighbours of the patients. "We have turned people down for a number of reasons. We have had a case where two people came, said they wanted to donate, but when we separated them, and asked how they met, they had two very different stories. That raised a red flag," Ms. Shilton said. "Some donors admit to us they may have been estranged from their family, and feel this is the way to get back in the family's good graces.

"Some people bring single moms on welfare in as donors. We would question that. You can't lift for six weeks after the surgery."

Yet the sale of organs may be a natural next step in the burgeoning trend of Canadians, an estimated 20 to 30 a year, going abroad to purchase organs for transplant. British Columbia is the only country that tracks out-of-country transplants.

The source of those organs is highly controversial. China has been accused of harvesting the organs of executed prisoners. In Israel, one renegade doctor takes patients to Turkey, Eastern Europe and even to some U.S. clinics for transplants from people who are paid for their organs, according to Organ Watch. A human kidney was auctioned in 1999 on the Internet site eBay until the company put a stop to it.

The B.C. Transplant Society has been lobbying Ottawa to make the practice a Criminal Code offence, a move that would give police the authority to investigate the illicit organ trade.

But Anne McLellan, the Minister of Justice, responded in a letter to the society that the matter is a provincial responsibility. "It does not appear that your society has identified any such purchases in Canada," one official added.

"I am unaware of anyone trying to sell organs in Canada through any type of black market," said Dr. David Rush, president of the Canadian Society of Transplantation, which condemns the practice.

Mr. Barrable, with the B.C. Transplant Society, expects the global black market to grow as wait lists increase, the population ages and cadaver organs become less plentiful.