Hi, Would You Like to Buy A Kidney?
No, not kidney beans, the two little round things you have which filter out by-products from your bloodstream. Oh, and incidently, you have two of 'em and only need one to survive. The going rate depends on country:

$6,000 = average going rate.

$500 - $1000 = Iraq after Gulf War
$2,000 = Manila = 1,282 Big Macs
$20,000 = Israel
$30,000 - $50,000 = America =9,523-15,873 Big Macs

These are all in the common US Dollar currency, and a reflection of how much each person from their respective country values their own kidney. In order to make this more applicable, I've converted to dollars to Big Mac Purchasing Power, how many Big Macs you could buy with that money.

Me being a wannabe economist, think that you can probably find black market prices of various organs, enough to figure out just how much a human life is worth. What is interesting, looking at this data (and it is a small sample I know) is that life is worth differently compared across countries; i.e. if you're from America -- the value of your kidney is worth 100x that of someone from Iraq. Interesting arbitrage opportunity there; if I were Iraqi, and wanted to sell my kidney, I'd buy a ticket to the U.S and sell it from there.

There are also many interesting things you can do with this data. If the value of a life is the present value of all expected income, and expected income is measured in productivity units of, say Big Macs, one might say that Americans were expected to produce more than other people.

Humph, you might say, my present value is worth millions more than what I'm being paid now; well either the labor market rate is wrong, or you're not doing a very good job marketing your human capital. Too bad either way.