Not for use in pies.

THE DAILY YOMIURI (FEB. 2) reports that the government of the Philippines may create the world's first open market for live human kidneys. The country's health ministry has devised a plan whereby foreign patients could pay a donor $14,000 for a kidney, about CDN$35,000 for the costs of the procedure, and roughly $10,000 toward a health fund for native Filipino patients. The government hopes to cut off oxygen to a burgeoning black market in organs and capture domestic benefits from Japan's 10,000-member kidney waiting list, but the plan is likely to stir international controversy and must survive public hearings. If it goes ahead, though, there will be yet another avenue of escape from the "single tier" of Canadian medicare.