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Like dozens of other men in the dusty copra town of Lopez, Quezon, Rommel, 30, has a long scar that slices diagonally across the side of his stomach.
One can imagine the scar dissolving cinematically into a line on a map that stretches from Quezon province to Israel, Saudi Arabia or any one of the wealthy countries with waiting lists of patients dying for what Rommel once had: a spare healthy kidney.
Now Rommel’s spare is gone, transplanted into a foreigner who could afford the US$60,000 or so package deal for a kidney in the Philippines. Five years later, Rommel is as poor as ever, the P80,000 he was given by the kidney broker long gone, leaving him just the scar and the bitter memory of being ripped off.
He also feels he was coerced. After a month of being prepared in Manila for the transplant, like a cow being fattened, he wanted to back out. “I wanted to back out, but they already spent money on my tests so I was not allowed to go home," he said.
He...