Organ Trade: session organ trade
Americans buying kidneys in Manila
July 22, 2001
BY MARINA JIMENEZ AND STEWART BELL
MANILA--''Kidney, kidney,'' the woman with the ponytail and the crooked teeth cackles, pointing the way to a one-room shack made of corrugated tin and scraps of plywood. ''Kidney, kidney!''
The shack serves as a makeshift office for Rey Arcilla, an agent in Manila's thriving organ trade who makes $20 for every slum-dweller he brings to the operating table ready to sell a kidney to a wealthy foreigner.
''There is a big demand for organs,'' says the 37-year-old recruiter, lifting his shirt to show the scar across his belly from when he sold his own kidney.
''Most of the foreigners who come here are Arabs, but we also have some Americans.''
The trade in human body parts is flourishing in the Philippines, where foreign patients can purchase kidneys for as little as $2,000. Despite a pledge by the Philippine government to stamp out the market, brokers still help Filipinos sell their kidneys to North American and Saudi patients, who are operated on at three private hospitals here.
Some transplant surgeons will even sell foreign patients a package deal for $30,000 to $40,000, arranging everything from the donor to a private recovery room, doctors in Manila say.
Donors and their agents also approach patients in clinic waiting rooms, offering to sell to the highest bidder, usually a foreigner.
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