It’s “The Big Donor Show” - three Dutch contestants vie for the kidney of one terminally-ill donor, preferring to take their chances on a reality television show than on the organ waiting list. After all, the Netherlands has less than impressive donor rates.
Comparably, a one-in-three shot at life may sound pretty sweet.
The show was briefly the international media’s sweetheart. ‘Experts’ pompously debated the ethics and morality of such a spectacle. Some were sickened by the idea of distributing organs based on the results of a televised popularity contest, while others were just thankful that the organ shortage would finally be highlighted. The latter group wasn’t disappointed - when it finally aired last night, it became apparent that the show was a hoax. All three “contestants” are, however, in genuine need of a kidney, and they willingly appeared on the show to bring attention to their cause.
We could debate whether or not this was ethical or moral. More than 50,000 new requests for organ donor registration forms were received in response to the show - that’s all I need to know to make my judgment.
How do you herd humpback whales?
(a) Calfnapping
(b) Strategic placement of orca dung
(c) Australian didgeridoo music
(d) Fire-hose sprays
Tibetan monks created a unique, tapestry-like display out of colored sand.
And then a toddler found his way to it. Not pretty.
Here’s a big surprise - a poll shows that individuals who actually know gays are less likely to try to ruin their lives.
And there are 10-foot sea worms! Whodathunkit?
.
The brand of human dignity sold from pulpits nationwide: if something has to die prematurely, it sure as hell better not be the embryo. If that precious little cluster of love can be saved from the lab (to face the much more dignified fate of slowly degrading in a storage facility) we’ll know that Americans really value life. As for the millions of born people suffering from painful and debilitating diseases… well, they’ll be with God soon.
Compassion at its finest.
In recent news, Britain decided to lift its ban on the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research purposes. And honestly, every ‘pro-life’ website I’ve seen cover the subject has the gall to ask why.
Why? Could it possibly be that many of us, after watching loved ones dwindle away, desperately want to explore the life-saving potential of embryonic stem cells? There is a shortage of human eggs available for research in England, and by inserting a human donor’s DNA into an animal egg, scientists can effectively create an embryo that is 99.9% human. More research, more stem cells, and ultimately - cures.
And no, there won’t be any hybrids walking among us. Implantation is strictly prohibited, and all embryos must be destroyed within fourteen days.
The choice is thrust into your hands when your wife, bleedy relentlessly, is deemed unable to legally consent to a surgery to save her life and end that of her nine-week-old fetus.
You don’t have time to think.
You aren’t prepared to make this choice.
What do you do?
Nothing is stopping the bleeding. There seems to be nothing they can do. They talk about trying some drugs, but then they decide things are going too fast to give time to let them work. So that leaves only surgery as a possibility. Surgery means hosing her out. It means killing the baby. So obviously, we look into other options. Only now, my wife is so out of it, from blood loss, from the painkillers, that the doctor said she is no longer able to legally consent. Now I’m handed a clipboard. On it is consent to basically give my wife an abortion and kill our future child. And it is all on me, my decision, mine alone. Something I never thought I’d ever face, ever have to deal with. Made worse by being a decision of either kill the baby or potentially watch both my wife and the baby die. The doctors did not say at this point that it was absolutely necessary. Maybe more blood could be transfused in. Maybe she wasn’t dilated - they hadn’t figured it out yet. Still too much blood. So then there I was, facing the sort of choice that you usually see only in hypotheticals in ethics and philosophy classes. Only it was real. It was my wife. And I didn’t have exactly a lot of time to think about it. It was just me and the clipboard. An empty line there, marked for my signature. My wife bleeding right next to me. The ultrasound of my baby, and its heartbeat, fresh in my mind from minutes before. I cannot begin to describe how I felt at that moment. One cannot know until you are in it. I won’t even try. I hope I never feel that way again.
Most of us expected some upset when Amanda of Pandagon was hired by the Edwards campaign, but man, the shit sure did hit the fan.
Amanda’s a controversial blogger. She’s strongly opinionated. Her arguments provoke thought, but they’re not tailored to capture all sides of an issue: she’s a pro-choice vegetarian liberal (among many, many other things), and she’s never tried to be anything to the contrary in order to appeal to another demographic. In short, she’s an actual human being - no rough edges softened, no whites bleached, no sugar-dusting. She swears. She gets pissed. She names names.
And she’s intelligent, whether you agree with her or not. She brings new perspectives to the table. She brings up issues and new developments that otherwise tend to fall through the cracks. I think she’ll be an asset to the Edwards’ campaign, and I look forward to reading her work.
So what’s the problem? The political world is a whitewashed mudbath. It’s unfortunate, but I have to wonder if the blogosphere will be wise enough to look past Amanda’s naughty language and satirical name-calling in her personal blog and see her value as an intelligent, well-informed professional.