"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
If you haven’t seen the movie Serenity, this Television Without Pity recap of the movie will make little sense; it will not resonate. But if you have, clear some time in your schedule and read this. It is a thing of sheer and almost religious beauty, words made real and solid, so infused with passion and reverence it is infectious, and should be contagious. Jacob is amazing, masterful; you will not be sorry.
In a display of truly questionable ethics that I would only expect from American reality television, a Dutch reality TV show is set to premier – one that has three families competing to win a dying woman’s kidney. The show producers admit that there’s no guarantee that the families will go through this ordeal and receive anything, including a winning kidney – although they hope to skirt Dutch transplant laws by transplanting the kidney while the donor is still alive.
The producers echo the same altruistic motivations any producer of any show that exploits a failing in the medical system (see any number of non-quite-reality-TV airing on American stations right now), that they’re doing it to draw attention to the shortage of organs available for transplant, and that their show isn’t as bad as the reality of the number of people who die every year waiting for transplant.
No, their show is only show bad that three families will compete, beg, plead and do whatever they can to win the sympathy of the voting public and sway the dying donor, regardless of the fact that Dutch law does not allow post-mortem directed donation, that their family is the most deserving.
A few years ago, I wrote about an ABC show by the name of Miracle Workers, and what I said that that show is equally applicable to BNN’s Big Donor Show: when medicine begins competing with television to provide medical services to people in need, when network executives are masquerading as fairy godmothers, we need to ask ourselves: do we want medical care to continue becoming a theatre of entertainment, something we should be lucky to receive? Are you pretty enough, sexy enough, compelling enough to be picked out of a flood of applicants to receive the chance of care? Will your story win the hearts, minds, and most importantly, votes of the viewing public?
-Kelly Hills, with thanks to everyone who sent copies of the story to us!
[It is the ultimate in a TV reality show–organ donation by the dying! American Idol take a back seat to Dying Dutch Decider! -Art Caplan]
Originally posted on the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.
The AP is reporting that it took 2 hours and 10 jabs before Ohio prison staff were able to insert shunts to deliver a lethal cocktail to inmate Christopher Newton. Botched executions have become almost common now, with multiple states questioning what the most humane method of execution is, and in at least nine states completely suspending lethal injections while the procedure is re-evaluated.
But this case takes a bizarre turn when you start reading the details. Newton laughed and joked with the prison medical staff while they tried to insert the needles, and he was even allowed a bathroom break during the proceedings. But the truly bizarre comes from just how helpful Newton was in his own case, insisting that the only way he would cooperate with investigators is if they sought the death penalty.
Bizarre aspects to the case aside, Ohio is one of the states that had a botched execution last year. Following the extended execution of Joseph Clark, which took close to 90 minutes due to scarred veins from drug use, the state announced it would make several key changes to how it handled lethal injections, designed to prevent any extended execution process in the future. That these changes were in place for Newton’s execution continues to raise the question of whether or not lethal injection can ever be the swift and painless death it was originally advertised as being.
-Kelly Hills
Originally posted on the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.
I’m addicted to two sorts of television shows: forensic dramas and medical shows. I’m indulging that addiction tonight, with several hours of CSI and then medical mystery shows. One of the challenges to these shows, for me, is diagnosing the disease prior to the show does – and about 25 minutes ago, I looked up from the php pages I’ve been poking at, cocked my head towards the television, said “porphyria – probably acute and intermittent“, and went back to the website.
Guess what the patient was just diagnosed with? Sometimes, I think I missed my calling…
I spent much too much time last night, thanks to an episode of CSI that I was watching to relax and unwind, not get wound up to the point of staying up til nearly dawn, reading both about porphyria and Polyheme, trying to figure out if Polyheme (or another heme or full blood substitute) would actually work as a treatment for porphyria.
I get caught up in the strangest sidetracks and deviations.