article had claimed that israel killed palestinians to harvest their organs, although the author, the culture editor for aftonbladet, and nancy scheper-hughes denied that it had made that claim. the philippines although the sale of organs was not legal in the philippines, prior to 2008 the practice was tolerated and even endorsed by the government. the philippine information agency, a branch of the government, even promoted "all-inclusive" kidney transplant packages that retailed for roughly $25,000. the donors themselves often received as little as $2,000 for their kidneys. the country was a popular destination for transplant tourism. one high-ranking government official estimated that 800 kidneys were sold annually in the country prior to 2008, and the who listed it as one of the top 5 sites for transplant tourists in 2005. in march 2008, the government passed new legislation enforcing a ban on organ sales. after the crackdown on the practice, the number of transplants has decreased from 1,046 in 2007 to 511 in 2010. since then, the government has taken a much more active stance against transplant tourism. in the united states in the united states, organ procurement is heavily regulated by united network for organ sharing (unos) to prevent unethical allocation of organs. there are over 110,000 patients on the national waiting list for organ transplantation and in 2016, only about 33,000 organ transplants were performed. due to the lack of organ availability, about 20 patients die each day on the waiting list for organs. organ transplantation and allocation is mired in ethical debate because of this limited availability of organs for transplant. in the united states in 2016, there were 19,057 kidney transplants, 7,841 liver transplants, 3,191 heart transplants, and 2,327 lung transplants performed. regulation organ procurement is tightly regulated by united network for organ sharing (unos). in the united states, there are a total of 58 organ procurement organizations (opos) that are responsible for evaluating the candidacy of deceased donors for organ donation as well as coordinating the procurement of the organs. each opo is responsible for a particular geographic region and is under the regulation of the organ procurement and transplantation network. geographic transplant regions the united states is divided into 11 geographic regions by the organ procurement and transplantation network. between these regions, there are significant differences in wait time for patients on the organ transplant list. this is of particular concern for liver transplant patients because transplantation is the only cure to end-stage liver disease and without a transplant, these patients will die. one example that brought this disparity to light was in 2009, when steve jobs traveled from california, where wait times are known to be very long, to tennessee, where wait times are much shorter, to increase his chances of getting a liver transplant. in 2009, when jobs received his liver transplant, the average wait time for liver transplantation in the united states for a patient with a meld score of 38 (a metric of severity of liver disease) was about 1 year. in some regions, the wait time was as short as 4 months, while in others, it was more than 3 years. this variation for a patient with the same illness severity has caused significant controversy over how organs are distributed. hope act the hope (hiv organ policy equity) act allows for clinical research on organ transplantation from hiv+ donors to hiv+ recipients. the act was passed by congress in 2013 and officially changed optn policy to allow for its implementation in november, 2015. prior to the hope act, it was banned to acquire organs from any potential donor who was known to have, or even suspected to have, hiv. according to unos, in the first year of implementation, 19 organs were transplanted under the hope act. thirteen of those organs transplanted were kidneys and 6 were livers.