A foreigner can buy a kidney from a healthy but poor individual in a depressed community in the Philippines for as low as US$2,000. This figure is small but in a society where millions of families earn less than US$1 dollar a day, this amount can convince an unemployed individual to sell his or her organ.

In 2005 the Philippines was identified by the World Health Organization as the No. 5 hotspot in the world for organ trafficking. According to the registry of Philippine Renal Disease there were 531 foreign recipients of kidneys from non-related donors in 2007, as against 313 Filipino recipients, with 29 cadaveric donors as against over 1,000 living donors.

Last year kidney transplants in the country went down to 690, as reported by the Philippine Society of Nephrology. But almost 200 transplant beneficiaries were still foreigners – despite a ban on organ sales to foreigners imposed by the national government. Health authorities believe 50 percent of kidney transplants in the country may involve organ sales.

The Philippine Congress has been deliberating several legislative measures that seek to address the issue of the rising number of victims of organ trafficking, while sustaining efforts to help those in need of organ transplants.

Some of the proposed measures include the removal of the ban on senior citizens to become kidney donors. Doctors argue that the organs of persons above 60 years old may still be used by older patients. Another measure seeks to establish a national registry and reporting system of donors and recipients to remove the role of middlemen who make a business out of organ donations.

The Philippine College of Physicians and Philippine College of Surgeons are supportive of the proposal to include the concept of health promotion, disease prevention and organ or tissue donation in the basic education curriculum.

A bold but controversial measure is the “opt out” system, or presumed consent bill. The author of the bill explains how the bill addresses the commercialization of organ donation in the country: “Upon reaching the age of 18, each Filipino will be asked if he or she would refuse to be an organ donor and in the event that he or she would not refuse, he or she is then presumed to be a willing organ donor. In the event of an untimely death, the person’s relatives will be notified of his/her wish to be a donor.”

The lawmaker wants to maintain a national registry of persons who have refused to donate their organs. Those who don’t register their objection will automatically become a donor. This procedure is observed in several European countries like Austria and Spain. This radical proposal was conceived out of frustration with the “opt in” system that has been in place in the country for the past decade but has produced only 1 deceased donor with a donor card.

Regulators of kidney transplants should learn from the country’s Eye Bank Foundation, which claims to be the most successful eye bank in Asia with 90 percent of donations from medico-legal cases, and only 10 percent from voluntary donors.

Sharing one’s kidneys is not wrong since it helps save lives. A healthy individual has the right to donate his or her kidney for altruistic reasons. But organ donations become controversial if the poor are encouraged and forced to sell their kidneys for a hefty sum.

The government has to intervene and regulate organ transplants to protect the rights of the poor while balancing the needs of the sick who require urgent organ transplants.

The government should also clarify the objectives of its medical tourism program, since it could be abused by crooked doctors who want to promote organ selling to desperate foreigners in urban poor communities. The government has to act now if it wants to disprove the accusation that its economic strategy depends on the exporting of its skilled labor to other countries and the selling of organs of its poor citizens to rich foreigners.

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Because of the swine flu scare, thermal scanners were installed in airports, government buildings, schools, and malls. These scanners measure the body temperature of passengers, students, and workers. If the machine screens a hot body, the unfortunate individual is immediately quarantined since he/she is immediately suspected of possibly carrying a swine flu virus.

A person is usually socially excluded because of the color of his/her skin or his/her physical attributes. Outsiders who don’t have the correct identification cards cannot enter exclusive enclaves. Persons affiliated with dangerous political ideals are barred from accessing various privileged sites in society. Monitoring the body heat of individuals is the latest innovation from the science of crowd control. A human being cannot control his/her body temperature but a person’s body heat is now a basis for reducing the rights of individuals in society. A sick person is treated like a criminal – he/she is forced to be isolated from the community.

Nobody is complaining because measuring a person’s body heat is considered by many as an objective/scientific/medical process. Those who measure body temperature are usually health workers; and the procedure is often done in clinics and hospitals. Today, thermal scanning is quickly becoming an imposed requirement before individuals are allowed to enter a building.

Public safety is invoked to justify thermal scanning. Believing that it will help prevent the spread of the dreaded swine flu virus, many are supportive of this quasi-medical procedure. Measuring body heat is no longer a private act. It is now being done even in public places. It is not supervised by health practitioners but by security personnel. Notice the small thermal scanners which look like laser guns? They are guns without bullets. But they are powerful guns which target the forehead of individuals.

What are the consequences of making thermal scanning a public ritual? It normalizes the invasion of our inner selves, our inner essence, our inner heat. The state and other symbolic authorities have been given the power and the right to gaze the “inside” of our bodies. Thermal scanning is redefining the meaning of privacy. Individuals are now expected to bare open their biological profile for public scrutiny. The state can now use this new strategy of domination to discriminate against individuals who emit too much body heat. Today, Big Brother has developed an acceptable and efficient social experiment of monitoring body heat. What will stop the totalitarian state from mass-producing gadgets that will also screen blood types, skin allergies, vitamin deficiencies, body infections, and other contagious viruses? Machines that measure heartbeats, IQ, EQ, and even sperm counts could be developed in the future.

Thermal scanning could be the initial step in the ultimate aim of allowing only the healthy, able-bodied, supermen/superwomen of the world the right to live and interact in society. The sick, the weak, and other carriers of inferior genes will be deprived of the right to exist and mingle with the rest of the human race.

Public thermal scanning, despite its seemingly innocent mission, legitimizes social exclusion. It is a sophisticated form of social control. It militarizes a medical procedure. It paves the way for a new kind of biological discrimination.

Lesson: Die you sick people.

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