Dutch broadcaster BNN plans to air a television show ("The Big Donor Show") this week in which a terminally ill woman will decide who out of three young patients will get her kidney. Viewers will be able to advise the 37-year-old woman, known as Lisa, via text messages which of the candidates to pick. The show is scheduled for next Friday in a prime time spot. BNN, whose former director Bart de Graaf (picture) died 5 years ago from kidney failure after spending years on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper that the show wanted to highlight the acute shortage of donors in the Netherlands. The show is produced by Endemol, the Dutch entertainment powerhouse that invented the Big Brother television show in 1999. Several transplant patient organisations and politicians have objected to The Big Donor Show. “This is going in the direction of selling organs,” a spokeswoman for the Dutch Transplant Foundation told Algemeen Dagblad. A Christian Democrat Member of Parliament called on the nation's ministers of health care and culture to stop the show. The Labour PvdA minister Ronald Plasterk says the programme is "inappropriate" and objects to the "contest element" of the donor show. He stressed that the Media Act does not allow the authorities to ban programmes in advance. Nor does the minister plan to make a moral appeal to BNN because he does not support pressuring media to self-censor. In the Netherlands, organ transplants are bound to strict rules. People are not allowed to choose who their organs will go to after they die. But with kidney transplants - which can be carried out while the donor is still alive - they are allowed to choose, provided there is proof of a relationship between donor and recipient. BNN says the show is distasteful, but necessary to get attention from the public for the problem of a lack of donor organs.
4 comments:
Yes, it has gone too far. The news story is even broadcasted in my local tv stations. There was a discussion involving the father of the American kid who died in Italy and whose family decided to give his organs for transplants. It is one thing to make people aware of the issue, it is another thing to make it as entertainment. Are we the same as the Romans?
DA in SF
I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing is a big publicity stunt. And that there won't be a real "Big donor show" tomorrow. This story has attracted a lot of publicity all over the world, and hopefully many people have decided to register as organ donors.
It looks like you were right. ONE BIG HOAX on those three competing persons. What shameful display!
DA in SF
The three candidates were in on the hoax - they knew what was going on. It was a very, very clever publicity stunt for a good cause. I commend the TV station for what it did. Excellent TV and the debate about changing the donor organ system has started again.
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