[W]hy not make a documentary about a person who donates one of his or her organs (while still being alive) to help out a friend, family member or even a stranger?

There already is literature available on living donation, which is heavily pushed by transplant centers and others in the transplantation community for a number of reasons. (Living donor organs often are superior; they often are from a relative and so have better genetic compatibility; one can do the transplant when one prefers rather than have to wait for an organ; it reduces the enormous need for cadaver donor organs.)

http://www.kidney.org/transplantation/livingDonors/index.cfm

http://www.livingdonorsonline.org/general.htm

http://www.organtransplants.org/

http://www.unos.org/living_donation.asp

http://www.optn.org/about/donation/livingDonation.asp

http://www.house.gov/mcdermott/kidneycaucus/livdon.html

http://www.organdonor.gov/

Please be aware that the issue is psychogically “powerful,” and is not always, guaranteed joyful and perfect. (A hint at how powerful is the practice of strict anonymity between donors and recipients of cadaver organs. An even better hint about living donation specifically is that a reason that an organ is not going to be donated — due to refusal, due to failed health tests for HIV or hepatitis, or due to genetic incompatibility — is often withheld from even family member recipients.)

Living is not negotiable, if you need an organ and that’s the way to get it

Advertise, or go overseas and pay cash — and are you going to get an organ that’s genetically compatible, or even the correct blood type, necessarily?

We’re cutting corners genetically as it is to try to speed up blacks on the US waiting list, we’re cutting corners with quality (expanded criteria donor organs), and some want to have the state pay donors, which is disturbing. The best thing to do at this point is to go to “presumed consent” for organ donation to reduce the supply problem, the core issue.

The solution is more organs, not so much changes to the current allocation rules.

At this time, the allocation of kidneys is subject to future changes, not only with a future full spectrum or scale or index range of quality rather than two classes, and likely to similar ratings for recipient candidates, but also already in the works are changes aimed at greater utility, as opposed to “fairness” (such as waiting time as a major criterion for allocation decision-making along with genetic compatibility).

Already planned are allocation rule changes that seek to reach the maximum years and quality of life provided by the kidneys. There will be fewer standard (high-quality) organs available to older, sicker people under these changes.

Here is what may be the best layperson’s writeup on this.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117345431796732257-PGIlhWN9pkVmj0CFQP77RNr9bBg_20070320.html?mod=blogs

Related:

http://www.pkdcure.org/site/PageServer?pagename=medical07_unosmeeting

http://www.bioethics.gov/background/ethics_of_organ_allocation.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/01/MNG3CNB93O1.DTL&type=health

Here — some person decided, in today’s self-absorbed world, to do what? create a blog about transplantation and issues related to it such as allocation.

http://transplantheadquarters.blogspot.com/2007/02/kidney-allocation-and-age.html

http://transplantheadquarters.blogspot.com/2007/01/new-allocation-policies.html

…

Lynx: in France, I don’t know how long the show ran but the strangers-off-the-street sex-play-by-play-announcement show “Love At First Sight” or whatever it was, was already broadcast years ago.

I don’t have a clue how organ transplants go in the US. In Spain we supposedly have a very good system, and surgeons with their facilities are available the minute they are needed, at least for transplant surgery. If the Netherlands has greater problems (which I would find surprising, but not impossible) they certainly need to fix them, but not like this.
A sort of side note. When reality television started up, I thought “how boring, and how degraded” and this was still the Big Brother phase. Then Fear Factor came out, and I thought “geez, they really hit the bottom of the barrel”. Just recently in Spain “Cambio Radical” came out (apparently adapted from a British programme) which has women who dislike their own look undergo extensive plastic surgery to make themselves “better”. This made me sick to my stomach, and I thought “OK, there’s no WAY to get worse than this”. Now we have THIS programme (which, happily, Spanish networks have declined to broadcast) and I can’t help but wonder “what’s next?”

- A show that has a contest of who slims down fastest?
- A show where contestants must be the first to get pregnant by a man they don’t know?
- A show where young people compete to see who can last the longest binge drinking before having to go to the hospital?