No Black Market Organs for You

If you are on a waiting list for an organ transplant, don't bother going to the Philippines to get what you need.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- Foreigners will be permanently banned from receiving kidneys for transplant in the Philippines to prevent the country from becoming a major Asian center in a thriving black market, health officials announced Tuesday.
Extensive kidney trading involving impoverished Filipinos and prisoners—who sell their organs for paltry sums to syndicates catering mostly to foreign clients—has been reported by the local media in recent years. A temporary ban on kidney transplants involving foreigners was recently imposed.

China and Pakistan, among the world's biggest sources of kidneys, have taken steps to outlaw the sale of human organs, and desperate foreigners may be prompted to increasingly turn to the Philippines for kidneys, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said.

"The poor always end up as the ones being abused," he said, adding kidney transplants for foreigners have risen in recent years. "The sale of one's body parts is condemnable and ethically improper. We have to stop it."

The sale of organs is illegal in the Philippines. The ban—intended to protect poor Filipinos from exploitation—will prohibit foreigners from getting donated kidneys unless they can prove a donor is related to them by blood, Duque said.

He said the ban was endorsed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and will take effect in about three weeks. Kidney donations among Filipinos will continue but will be strictly monitored by a new regulatory body, he said.

Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said at least 500 kidney transplants involving foreign patients were conducted last year in the Philippines.

...Local TV networks have shown footage of Manila slums where virtually all men bore kidney surgery scars after selling their kidneys for about $4,760 each.

This is a dirty, but not so secret, practice in Asia.

After years of denial, the Chinese government finally admitted that it engaged in human organ harvesting. In China, prisoners, including political prisoners, were executed for their organs.

China has acknowledged that foreigners who can pay more than native Chinese have been given preference for organ transplants and that "donors" for the operation have often been executed prisoners.

WND reported in 2004 charges by the banned Falun Gong group – backed up by Chinese doctors and human rights experts – that the communist government was torturing prisoners, executing them and trafficking in their body parts.

This week, at a summit for transplant doctors held in Guangzhou, the once-denied practice was confirmed by government officials.

"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," said Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu, according to English-language China Daily newspaper. "The current organ donation shortfall can't meet demand."

A ministry spokesman also said that "wealthier people, including foreign patients" were able to move to the top of waiting lists ahead of others waiting for organs.

Whether people are selling their organs or the government is taking prisoners and executing them to harvest their organs for transplant, it's a sick, sick practice.

Talk about torture! Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!

Question: Has the U.S. executed prisoners and sold their organs on the black market?

Question: Do the poor in America resort to selling their kidneys?