When I wrote the other day about the Dutch “reality” television show in which a terminally ill woman will interview “contestants” vying to receive her kidney for transplant, I assumed that the donation would be after she had died. Apparently not. According to this story, the dying woman wants her kidney taken before death.
Will doctors actually permit themselves to be part of such a scheme? And if a dying woman, why not a disabled person who is depressed and feels his or her organs would be better used by someone else? Or for that matter, whyt not any suicidal person? After all, choice is choice, and ratings are ratings.
By the way, please do not believe that such grizzly scenarios are unthinkable. In Culture of Death I quote two very prominent American organ transplant ethicists who argue that it could be acceptable to permit people to donate their organs as part of every planned death, including euthanasia. That is also Kevorkian’s perspective.