Island Life by David Slack

I'm with you, both on the total shonkiness of Endemol, and the opt out organ donation. Even the current (for want of a better word) system should work - many, many people (including me) have indicated on their driver's licences that they wish to be organ donors, but in practice, the hospitals etc pretty much ignore that and ask the family if they're allowed to take the organs - resulting in a lot of refusals.

Jeremy, I've heard that hospitals do that, and while I appreciate them trying to be nice to the families, you have to wonder what other clear and express wishes are ignored. Oh well

i heard a very argument against the notion that people opt out and i'm trying to remember what it is. forgive me if i get it wrong.

the issue is around informed consent, and that consent should be given at the time of the procedure. people give consent to things then change their mind later. if you use the opt out option, they might be too young or never have given significant thought to the matter to give informed consent before they die. the only way to get proper informed consent is to have family members make the decision at the time.

i'm sure it all sounded better when i heard it. i'm sure some select committee considered this issue last year.

I agree that the show sounds, well, crazy. I've given up watching TV, so....

However, I dont think compulsory/optout organ donation is a good idea. I was all for donation, before I got talking to a friends wife - she's a (very good) anesthesiologist (knock-out-gal :) ) and has been involved with organ harvesting. She said, knowing what she knows, she would NEVER donate organs - most of the people who get them, come back for another in a short space of time (no lifestyle changes, so the screw the new one up, too), and the procedure itself - even tho the patient is basically dead anyway - is rather macabre.... think cut-n-run

I think I'd rather donate my body to a medical school....

no lifestyle changes, so the screw the new one up, too

I saw people like that who were in coronary care when I was there. Doesn't mean that not any of us change. Ron Gray lived another two decades after his heart transplant and threw himself into life with his second chance. I also know people on dialysis who will be doing whatever it takes to preserve their health if they get the operation. And of course, there are the blameless kids to consider...

people give consent to things then change their mind later.

There's nothing to stop them opting out later, though. If it were widely known that you needed to be doing so, wouldn't people give it more active thought as the years went by? That's what happens with wills, for example. (In fact, perhaps that could be a useful role for your friendly lawyer to be performing?)

no lifestyle changes, so the screw the new one up, too

Yeah, but for every George Best there's a Jonah Lomu (I know, his donor is still kicking...but still).

Anjum, I know that also there's a huge can of worms around determining when exactly someone is braindead beyond the hope of recovery. I wouldn't want to be the one drawing the line in some of the iffier coma cases. That's where families informed consent is vital, but their consent should be limited to deciding whether the person is gone or not, they shouldn't be overriding the deceased wishes.
The problem is, once someone has been declared dead (or dead enough), then the wishes of the living overrule the wishes of the dead as they can't argue, and as time is generally of the essence, legal challenges aren't useful.

Yeah, that's the whole problem with organ donation for me. If I was lying there, supposed brain dead, with doctors keen to harvest my organs for their other patients, I would not want to donate my organs even if there was only 1 in a 1000 chance that I would recover. I am an atheist. Existence is better than non-existence. Death is not 0 degree Celsius, it is 0 degrees Kelvin. If you are alive, in whatever state, you are better off than if you are dead. IMHO.

Cheers,
Brent.

The programme makers make the reasonable claim that what they are doing is in essence what happens anyway with donors and recipients. So they argue there should be no moral objection to the programme.

It reminds me of Marc Hauser's train scenarios from his book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.

1. There's a train hurtling along the tracks heading for 5 people. You see this and can prevent these 5 deaths by pushing a lever to send the train down another track. But on that track is a man.

2. 5 people are once again walking along the railroad tracks about to be hit by an oncoming train. You see this but also so that the train can be stopped by pushing a heavy object in front of the train. the only heavy object at hand happens to be a very fat man.

In both cases one life can be sacrificed to save five. But Hauser found that most people would accept 1 but not 2.

The normal donor/recipient process sounds to me like scenario 1 whereas the programme sounds like 2.

RE: the TV show
The producers of the show obviously aren't going to show (ala American Idol) all the kidney-needers they went trhough before picking their final three.

You might find it horrible voting for one of the three, I find it horrible that the producers picked three from hundreds.

RE: donation

You can actually donate a lot of things without dying. Bone Marrow is one. My friend just died of bone marrow cancer (I can't spell Lukaemia) and was unable to get a transfer because only two people in the whole world showed up on the database as a match. and one was an umbilical cord.

I find it horrible that the producers picked three from hundreds.

But, as the programme makers point out, that happens anyway in the hospital system. Is that any worse in a moral sense?

Is that any worse in a moral sense?

Yes. As I doubt the Hospital system picks the people most likely to look good on TV and have an "interesting" story.

There are many things that happen in the hospital system, they happen in the hospital system because that's the place for them to happen. I can't imagine it being well received if the hospitals started selling tickets to various interesting procedures. I imagine one could pretty much cover the cost of separating conjoined twins if you sold a few dozen front row seats. There are many aspects of Reality TV that mark a return to the golden age of the freak show.

The second most famous maxim of PT Barnum:
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American Public"

Incidentally, it is a Dutch show, not American...“We know that this program is super controversial and some people will think it’s tasteless, but we think the reality is even more shocking and tasteless." It sounds quite awful. Although, if the show raises organ donation rates, then great. Tackiness be damned.

You think that reality TV could not possibly drop the bar any lower and then something like this happens.... The people who make this piece of human-suffering-as-spectacle have a justification. Waiting for an organ is "just like playing the lottery", they say. "We're making people aware of this desperate situation."

Puh-lease! It is like a lottery so good luck to them if it gets more people to donate. Already on this thread we've had ppl saying 'don't donate organs' so you know how widespread the problem is.

It's a [sad] fact that 'modern life' is now focussed on 'celebrity' so if you want anything you've got to be prepared to dance like a monkey - or no peanut. Case in point is Madeleine McCann who was abducted in Portugal. A tragedy indeed, but one of hundreds happening every day around the world. Why did Madeline 'win the lottery' ie have her story picked up by the media? Because her abduction made 'good copy' and her parents were willing to do whatever it took (ie talk to any media any time) to keep public interest alive.

I'm so sorry about your friend, Haydn.

Although, if the show raises organ donation rates, then great. Tackiness be damned.

Mrs. Smith, you called it right.
We've been brilliantly suckered.

It was a hoax.

Could change the title of this post to Now roll over and blog

A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to decide one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was a hoax, the programme makers said.

Identified only as "Lisa", the 37-year-old woman who had been said to have a brain tumour was to base her selection on the person's history and conversations with the candidates' families and friends.

At the last minute, she was revealed as a healthy actress. The contestants were also part of the deception.

I really hope we might think about inverting the present system, all the same.