Dateline Los Angeles, California, Nov. 5, 2007

The KCAL Channel-9 reported tonight the news that some healthy Filipinos sell – because of poverty – their kidneys and other organs to foreigners. Three Filipino males were interviewed and they reported to have sold their kidney for $2,000 each. The person who found the "donors" (AKA organ sellers) was reported to have received a finder’s fee of $1,000 per organ. The report said that the buyers of the kidneys (from the three Filipinos interviewed) were two patients from Mainland China and another patient from Saudi Arabia. The report’s video is available on the CBS web site at this link "Why Are Healthy People Selling Their Organs?"

Perhaps Filipino-American activists should mount a stronger and swifter protest over this CBS report in the similar fashion that they protested the joke in the "Desperate Housewives" episode. Perhaps the activists would protest this ugly version of "Philippine medical tourism," which is not only an indictment of the Philippine medical industry but also of Filipino surgeons (who are of course graduates of Philippine medical schools). After all, these Filipino physicians are the ones who performed (and continue to do) the organ transplants. This CBS-KCAL Channel-9 report is not fictional, unlike the "Desperate Housewives" brouhaha.