The chief problem with medical and bio-science ethics and morals is that the technology tends to be 5, 10 or 20 years ahead of the theology and the philosophy. The great ethicists and theologians to date have never said a word about the possibility of people trading their birth head for a designer head.Hell, they never even had any guidance for what bald men should do if science ever invents a cure for baldness. Or a cure for ED. Before the 1990s, you just went bald and drooped and took it like a man and sucked it up.
Meanwhile, you're dying, and a human (or maybe primate) kidney will save your life.
What Would Vleeptron Do? What does the Talmud say? What does Doctor Phil think? Ann Landers or Dear Abby? Benedict Spinoza? Alfred North Whitehead? Bertrand Russell?
Like, so far, nothing. Nada. Bupkis. You're on your own, pal. Here's the new kidney. Figure it out for yourself.
I think it's important, before all the screaming and cursing begins, to separate two issues:
* Is it ethical and moral?
* Is it tasteful and dignified?
Maybe what Dutch TV has got here is like Jerry Springer Saves Your Daughter's Life. Or MTV Real World does a heart transplant on you, and then everybody goes bunji jumping in Acapulco.
I don't want to see it.
But I sure do want to keep living for another decade or two. Maybe I just have to suck up my pride and dignity and good taste and elegance, and take the TV deal.
I suspect Dignity was always just an Illusion anyway. The surface of the world is paved entirely with banana peels, and every one of us is just an instant away from landing on our ass in the mud while a small crowd laughs.
If you want Dignity, buy a $40 ticket to "King Lear," and for two hours you can watch a horrible dysfunctional family mess -- exactly like your own horrible dysfunctional family mess -- but as you watch in the dark, every family member is wearing beautiful robes and crowns and speaketh in gorgeous, wise, dignified poetry, and nobody trips on a banana peel. For two hours you can see a big family fight worth carving into marble, and even worth watching again and again.
In your own life, the world promises you all the Dignity to which Donald Duck and Spongebob Squarepants are entitled. As Spinoza would say: Just take the kidney and shut up.
=================
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
(pickup on Monsters & Critics)
Wednesday 30 May 2007 13:46 Greenwich Mean Time
EU aims to increase
organ donations, 'shocked'
by Dutch TV show
[image:] Bart de Graaff who died five years ago now has a television programme in honour of him, called 'The Donor Show,' Bart News Network (BNN) the show broadcaster, says it wants to highlight the difficulties faced by kidney sufferers in getting donor organs as a tribute to BNN founder Bart de Graaff, who died of kidney failure five years ago, despite several transplants. 'The Donor Show' will be broadcast on Dutch television during the evening of 01 June 2007. EPA/KIPPA
Brussels -- The European Union on Wednesday unveiled plans aimed at boosting organ donations and transplants while sharply criticising a Dutch TV show in which a dying woman is due to choose a recipient for her kidneys with viewers advising her via text message.
EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou said he was 'shocked' by the concept of the reality TV show, which is due to air Friday.
'This is not the way I would have chosen to raise awareness for such a sensitive and serious issue,' Kyprianou told reporters. 'Some people will make money with it (the show), but we can raise awareness in a different way than by commercial action,' he said.
Dutch broadcaster BNN has said it would broadcast The Big Donorshow during which a 37-year-old woman is supposed to choose which of three kidney patients should receive her organ, despite calls from the government for the programme to be scrapped.
Viewers will be able to send text messages advising the woman whom to pick as the recipient for her kidney after she dies.
The new EU plans to increase the number of organ donations in the 27-member bloc focus on the creation of a European donor card to make it easier to identify people who are willing to donate organs.
Almost 10 people in Europe die every day while waiting for an organ, the commission said, adding that some 40,000 patients across the EU are currently on waiting lists for an organ transplant.
The EU executive's proposals to boost organ availability also include creating organ transplant coordinators in hospitals and expanding the use of living donors.
EU member states must harmonise their donor policies and better cooperate in the exchange of best practices, the commission said.
Kyprianou said that the EU needed 'common standards on the quality and safety of organ donations and transplantations ... to secure a sufficient and safe supply of organs.'
Increasing organ donations was also vital to fight illegal trafficking in human organs, the commission said, pledging to keep a close eye on organ trafficking activities.
Organ donation and transplant rates in the EU differ widely, ranging from 34.6 donors per million people in Spain to 13.8 donors in Britain, 6 donors in Greece and only 0.5 donors in Romania.
The EU countries with the highest number of donor card holders are the Netherlands (44 per cent), Sweden (30 per cent) and Ireland (29 per cent), the commission said, adding that there was a wide gap between the acceptance of such cards and their take-up.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
================
AFP pickup in der Spiegel (DE)
30. Mai 2007
Schrift:
SKANDALÖSE ORGANSPENDE-SHOW
TV geht an die Nieren
Ist das krank oder schon wieder aufklärerisch? Im niederländischen Fernsehen sollen Hilfesuchende um ein Spenderorgan konkurrieren - live, unter Einbeziehung der Zuschauer. Ausgeheckt haben das Format die Macher von "Big Brother".
Den Haag - Lisa muss bald sterben. Die 37-jährige Niederländerin leidet an einem Hirntumor, alle anderen Organe sind gesund. Deshalb hat sie beschlossen, eine ihrer Nieren zu spenden. Das Außergewöhnliche daran: Die Entscheidung über den Empfänger will sie in einer Fernsehsendung fällen - live und unter Einbeziehung der Zuschauer.
Organstransplantation: Vorbereitung im TV
Großbildansicht
DPA
Organstransplantation: Vorbereitung im TV
Zur besten Sendezeit will der Sender BNN "Die Große Spendershow" am Freitag ausstrahlen - und löste damit bereits im Vorfeld heftige Empörung aus. Gleichzeitig rückt das von den "Big Brother"-Erfindern der Firma Endemol entwickelte TV-Konzept das ganz reale Problem der fehlenden Spenderorgane ins Blickfeld der Öffentlichkeit.
Der auf ein jugendliches Publikum abzielende Sender BNN ist Skandale gewohnt: Mit freizügigen Formaten zu Sexualerziehung und Magazinen zu Sex und Drogen sorgte der Kanal in den Niederlanden schon häufiger für Aufregung. Ganz bewusst riskierten die Macher mit der Organspende-Show eine öffentliche Kontroverse. Sie wollten die Öffentlichkeit auf das Problem des Spendermangels aufmerksam machen, hieß es. Anlass für die Sendung, die einmalig bleiben soll, war demnach der fünfte Todestag des BNN-Gründers Bart de Graaff. Dieser starb an Nierenversagen, nachdem er jahrelang vergeblich auf eine Spenderniere gewartet hatte.
Das Konzept der Fernsehmacher ging auf: Weltweit berichteten Medien über die makabre Reality-Show, vor allem christlich engagierte Bürger veröffentlichten ihre moralischen Bedenken in Internetforen und Leserbriefen. Ein EU-Kommissionssprecher in Brüssel sprach mit Blick auf die Sendung von "ziemlich schlechtem Geschmack".
Die Live-Nieren-Vergabe beschäftigte schließlich sogar das niederländische Parlament. Zu einem Verbot der Sendung aus ethischen Gründen konnte sich die Regierung nach heftiger Debatte dennoch nicht entschließen. Das Mediengesetz erlaube es nicht, eine Sendung vor der Ausstrahlung zu untersagen, gab Medienminister Ronald Plasterk bekannt.
Eines hat die Sendung, so geschmacklos sie auch sein mag, bewirkt: Das Thema Organspende ist wieder ganz oben auf der Agenda. So wünscht sich die EU dringend mehr Organspenden und prüft derzeit die Einführung eines europäischen Spender-Ausweises, damit Herzen, Lungen und Lebern auch grenzüberschreitend zu neuen Besitzern finden können.
"Der Wunsch, Organe zu spenden, ist zwar hoch, de facto aber wird nicht viel gespendet", sagt EU-Gesundheitskommissar Markos Kyprianou. 2006 hätten 56.000 Europäer vergeblich auf eine Organspende gewartet. Über die niederländische Show zeigte sich der Kommissar jedoch "schockiert". "Organspende ist ein sehr heißes Eisen", unterstrich er. Er lehne es ab, wenn damit Geld gemacht werde.
In Deutschland wurde vor allem Kritik an Endemol laut, die schon für Reality-Formate wie die Containersendung "Big Brother" und die "Traumhochzeit" verantwortlich zeichnete. Die "Spendershow" sei das makabre Spiel um menschliche Not einer "moralisch völlig verkommene Medienagentur", ließ die Bundesärztekammer wissen. Mit der "unwürdigen Zurschaustellung menschlichen Elends" solle "durch Menschenverachtung" die Quote gesteigert werden, wetterte die Ärzteschaft und forderte einen europäischen Wertekonsens, der dies künftig unterbinde.
Für die drei Kandidaten im Alter von 18 bis 40 Jahren, die ab Freitag vor laufender Fernsehkamera ihre Not zur Schau stellen werden, zählt vermutlich nur die Aussicht auf den Hauptgewinn. Ihre Chance, eine Niere zu erhalten, liegt mit 33 Prozent "deutlich höher als für Menschen auf den Wartelisten", wie BNN-Chef Laurens Dillich kürzlich im Radio betonte. Anders als Teilnehmern anderer Fernsehshows winkt ihnen keine Karriere als "Superstar" oder "Supermodel" - sondern etwas viel Besseres: das Überleben.
-- Gerald de Hemptinne, AFP
10 comments:
OK, that's just got to be the most messed up thing that I've read today. I'm not a big fan of reality TV in general, but this one is just sick.
btw, the American tsunami of Reality TV historically traces to two roots:
* the PBS series "An American Family," where a prosperous southern California family, the Loud Family, invited a documentary camera crew to live in their house for a year. The huge viewer response shocked the commercial TV industry, which feverishly began cloning it.
* the Dutch original of "Survivor"
SO GLAD you enjoyed "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." DO NOT REVEAL THE SURPRISE ENDING -- Brother Juniper's reward -- to anybody.
Enjoy Hawaii! Need another beach book? I've been having a really wonderful time with a novel by a Dutch author who's buzzed to be on the Nobel Prize short list. The English translation (Penguin) is: "The Discovery of Heaven" by Harry Mulisch. It's a *roman a clef* about the fascinating community of 20th century Dutch astronomers and radio-astronomers.
And while in Hawaii, maybe check out the world champ mountaintop Mauna Kea observatories:
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/mko/
Well I think that the question of Morality cannot be answered because this is a very difficult subject. I for one find this show immoral but then again...my liver is still working properly.
The question is : How are we going to deal with Mass Media Gone Haywire ? I mean it is not important what is on the tube but what is happening around it and the effect it has on the audience.
10 years ago this show would have been impossible and i hate to admid it that the format of Reality TV was invented in Europe. Now those tv programmes must have been pretty desperate wanting to air a show like that to get dwindling audiecnces back from the Internet and the PS2. We sure got the remote control, but the moral instruction manual did not come with it.
the other thing that irritates me is the claim that this show is suppoded to make people aware of the fact that there are not enough transplantable organs around. Now that is the lamest duck I ever heard. its all about PR, Money, ratings and advertising space, not Human Dignity.
Maybe its better Marsh is no longer around to witness this. Bloody hell, he would give us a rant on our behaviour towards media you would not forget for a bloody long time
The best thing about TV is that you can still turn if off if you dont like whats on. Or better yet, not even turning it on in the first place
I have a friend who has a transplanted liver. He lives in DC, and was on the transplant list with Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, about a 2-hour drive from his home.
As his birth liver grew sicker and sicker, one day in late May, his doctor phoned and told him to pack a bag and get ready to drive to Baltimore.
"You have my new liver???"
"No, not yet," the doctor said. "But Memorial Day is coming up."
Memorial Day is a 3-day holiday, and in the USA is the busiest (and fastest) long-distance highway driving period of the year.
My friend packed his bag and a few days later indeed got a fresh new liver.
What do people think of growing herds of animals -- primates -- specifically for harvesting their organs for human transplants?
Or maybe, a bit farther into the future of cloning, a special population of test-tube (sub-)humans cloned without intellect or consciousness, but as a source for harvesting organs? Can you stand on a chair and see such a future? Whaddya think?
Cf. the movie "Coma" and its creeeeeeeeepy Jefferson Institute.
You mean like Brave New World with Alphas, Betas and so on ?
I SINCERELY HOPE NOT.
What about stemcells ??? Good or bad ???
Or try "The Time Machine" where we evolve into Eloi and Morlocks. (Morlocks think Eloi are very tasty.)
Well, that's the thing about leading-edge bio-ethics. I don't KNOW if stem-cell research is Good or Bad. Spinoza never said a word about it.
I do know that politicians who use stem-cell research as Savage Vote Candy for voters who know less about stem-cell research than I do will spend Eternity writhing in unimaginable torment in the sulfurous fires of Damnation.
THAT I KNOW.
But dropping back just a little closer to Now ... if chimpanzee kidneys and livers and hearts can be transplanted into humans, what do you think about breeding a special population of "organ harvest" animals?
Of course until we need their heart or liver, they'll be well-fed, well-treated, and kept in the best of health!
(And remember that my life-saving insulin came from experiments with dogs in the 1920s.)
STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS the show was aired yesterday and it turns out that donor Lisa was just an actress, but the candidates are for real and knew in advance that Lisa was just an actress.
My word, we all got fooled!!too sick to be for real!!
i wonder what Marsh had to say now.....
My first newspaper job, I was a copy boy (was ist auf deutsches?), I was 18, and from the movies I thought the editor would scream STOP THE PRESSES! (I think STOP PRESS is UK-ish.)
But no! The editor really screamed: HOLD PAGE ONE! (And Copy boy had to run down to the Press Room and show press boss a written order, because press boss could not possibly hear anything I screamed down there.)
Yes, last night I just heard the Dutch TV show was a hoax. And a very interesting hoax.
I think maybe the Vleeptron Ethics & Morals Directorate maybe even approves of this tasteless hoax. Because although the donor lady was just an actress and wasn't really dying of a brain tumor, the three recipients, who were knowing participants of the hoax, really are on waiting lists and really do need a new kidney. So TV viewers really did get to watch an authentic very serious situation and got to see the Human Faces of real people in this kind of crisis.
WELCOME TO VLEEPTRON, Siderite!!! Buna! Salut! You may "butt in" ANY TIME!
(But first you have to explain where your perfect English came from. Maybe you need to buy a big box of chocolates for your English professor. Your English is a hell of a lot better than my Romanian. But maybe my Olde Dacian from 200 AD is better than your Latin. Salve, amice! Do you speak with a Brit or an American accent?)
Anyway, Agence-Vleeptron Presse hereby appoints you our Man On The Ground in Romania and the Carpathians. We pay wages in pizza (transportation not included). So when I get to Bucharest, or you get to Massachusetts, you will get your pizza for all the local news you send A-VP.
Yeah, you raise an awfully important Bathtub Elephant -- it's my kidney, why can't I sell one of my kidneys to the highest bidder? This has been a huge controversy, and several nations -- pretty sure Egypt is one of them -- have fairly recently passed laws forbidding this trade in organ donating for $.
I think the troubling moral issue here is: When some people on Earth have more money than they can possibly ever spend, and some people on Earth don't have enough money to eat regularly, should there be Laws to prohibit what the Rich can buy from the Poor? If Bill Gates needs a kidney, will he just take a number and wait patiently for two or three years like my neighbor Marvin Schlobotnik?
Okay, I am waking up and injecting my first coffee directly into my heart again, so it will take me another hour or two to Solve These Troubling Moral Dilemmas. Also I want to find the Dutch Kidney Hoax story and post it.
All I know is Spinoza, and the poor guy never lived long enough to watch Dutch Reality TV. Does Mircea Eliade have anything to say about the morals and ethics of organ transplants? Or is he just strictly a myth guy?
Did The Great Scientist have any words of wisdom to say about these subjects before her unexpected demise?
Oh, the ownership of life-saving drugs. A-VP will also dig up a very recent story about the Ethical Behavior of a Big Pharma, Pfizer, about how (and on whom) Pfizer tests its life-saving drugs.
eer.........Marshall McLuhan distinguishes between private and corporate identity. You can do with your organs whatever you want to do, that is your private desicion. But when oyu put them on sale on eBay or TV then it is a corporate issue. I have a hard time imagining organ sales on QVC ("Call in NOW and you will recieve a free kidney if you buy two). Just imagine a society like in Onyc and Crake..*shudder*
McLuhan also sayd that THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE and we live in an age where TV no lager reports news, it helps to create it. I found it a bit shocking that so many poeple including myself did not get suspicious in the first place because we have been exposed to so much bulls**t on TV that we accepted the concept. Now ist that scary ? Because once you accept the idea of the Donor Show then the possibility of a live execution by lethal injection will not be far away...*bigshudder*...
I sincerely hope that for the rest of my life, there will always be some goofball who is clever enough to pull a nifty stunt / hoax like this that's good enough to fool me.
It appears that The Proper Medical Authorities in NL and EU were "asleep at the switch" about a lot of the organ transplant system. They trusted to their community of doctors and public-health experts and parliamentary committees.
The producers of "The Great Transplant Show" unilaterally decided they could get better things done faster by being theatrical clowns and confidence men and women, like Felix Krull.
Amherst College -- Ivy League, top-tier -- had a course called "Political Sculpture." For a class project, one student sought and received the approval of the college.
As students, faculty and employees arrived on campus early one morning and staggered to all the cafeterias and dining halls, they were greeted with signs which said
* * *
In the interests of the health of all mebers of the college community, AMHERST COLLEGE no longer permits the sale of coffee, an addictive beverage with no nutritional value, and well-known health risks.
* * *
And indeed, there was no coffee for sale anywhere on campus. A thousand coffee addicts howled and shrieked and screamed bloody murder.
The point of the scam was to raise the community's consciousness about the whole business of "the nanny state" which passes laws -- like making marijuana and cocaine and heroin illegal, and making drug use a criminal offense with heavy prison sentences -- to protect the individual from himself.
"The Morning Amherst College Banned Coffee" became a national story featured on many big TV networks, and the student was contacted for many TV interviews and newspaper stories.
And then the college re-legalized coffee. But there was just enough aroma of truth, it sounded just enough like the way a Nanny State acts, to make every coffee addict, from freshman to PhD professor, believe it.
Siderite -- I learned all my French from le cinema starring Jean-Paul Belmondo!
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