TV Kidney competition and ethics

The kidney competition on Dutch TV is very absurd by all standards. Human organs, in this sense, are likely to become a part of a person's will. So we may one day find in a person’s will statements like this, “as for my liver, it goes to my brother in law, my heart goes to my partner” etc.

There were shocking instances on the media like people committing suicide on the internet or the famous case of the self-confessed cannibal, 42-year-old computer expert who admitted that he had met a 43-year-old Berlin engineer, Bernd Brandes, after advertising on the internet, and had chopped him up and eaten him. So the media is running the risk of becoming a means of demeaning human life. There may one day be legal advertisements of people ready to sell their body parts or to act as intermediaries for those wishing to get them.

There may be competitions for childless couples to get a desired child by entering a competition. So human beings are offered in parcels through organs or in their entirety through children.

China has been criticised for the sale of the organs of executed people. It is a flourishing market of such a “trade” as patients can get the “goods” they want without being on the waiting list or going through the legal procedures.

In Holland, it must be a shame to see a competition of this kind. It is as shocking as seeing a person violently dying. People should live and die in dignity. Death as well as organ donation shouldn’t become commercialised to the point dying people are valued for what healthy organs they can leave to those on the waiting list. For those wishing to donate their organs, there are other means like charitable organisations. There should be no such nonsensical competitions where the dying are paraded before media viewers as a night show.

At 03:14 PM on 29 May 2007