Win a Kidney on the Next Reality Show!!!
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6699847.stm

A Dutch TV station says it will go ahead with a programme in which a terminally ill woman selects one of three patients to receive her kidneys.
Political parties have called for The Big Donor Show to be scrapped, but broadcaster BNN says it will highlight the country's shortage of organ donors.

"It's a crazy idea," said Joop Atsma, of the ruling Christian Democrat Party.

"It can't be possible that, in the Netherlands, people vote about who's getting a kidney," he told the BBC.

The programme, from Big Brother creators Endemol, is due to be screened on Friday night.

'Totally unacceptable'


Specialists in kidney transplants have condemned the programme
The 37-year-old donor, identified only as Lisa, will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversation with their family and friends.

Viewers will also be able to send in their advice by text message during the 80-minute show.

The Dutch donor authority has condemned the show, as have kidney specialists in the UK.

"The scenario portrayed in this programme is ethically totally unacceptable," said Professor John Feehally, who has just ended his term as president of the UK's Renal Association.

"The show will not further understanding of transplants," he added. "Instead it will cause confusion and anxiety."


HAVE YOUR SAY
I thought organ recipients were chosen on who is the closest match, not who the donor likes the most
Steve Davies, Romford, UK

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Professor Feehally also pointed out that, under normal circumstances, two people would benefit from a donor, each receiving one kidney.

"The set up of the programme bears no relationship to the way decisions are made about transplants in the real world," he said.

"Living donors can choose altruistically to give one of their kidneys - usually to a family member.

"If organs become available after someone dies, health professionals with access to detailed information about those waiting for a transplant make objective decisions about who should receive those particular kidneys."

'Shocking'


BNN chairman Laurens Drillich has defended the show
The former director of TV station BNN, Bart de Graaff, died from kidney failure aged 35 after spending years on a transplant waiting list.

"The chance for a kidney for the contestants is 33%," said the station's current chairman, Laurens Drillich. "This is much higher than that for people on a waiting list."

"We think that is disastrous, so we are acting in a shocking way to bring attention to this problem."

"For years and years we have had problems in the Netherlands with organ donations and especially kidney donations," agreed Alexander Pechtold of D-66, the Dutch social liberal party.

"You can have a discussion about if this is distasteful, but finally we have a public debate," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

TV critics in the UK have expressed horror at the programme, but said such a show would be unlikely in Britain.

"My first reaction, probably everyone's reaction, is that this is as dangerously near as we've got to a TV programme playing God," said Julia Raeside of the Guardian newspaper.

"People may live or die on the result of a game show. It's a step too far.

"I don't think this is anything to do with reality TV. It's just a crazy idea that would never play out over here."

The outcry comes at a difficult time for production company Endemol, who were censured by Ofcom last week for their handling of the Celebrity Big Brother racism row.

The Australian version of Big Brother has also drawn criticism for not telling a contestant that her father had died.

Fuck this Dutch noise. Gimme a TV show where stupid TV executives are thrown into vats of boiling lard.

Big Brother blows bigtime. I've been thinking and saying this for years. No-one cares though, so fuck 'em all. Squares on both sides. And so forth.

from my experience as a transplant recipient, i think this is abhorent. i think it is great the woman is donating, however she could just do it anomynously like everyone else. and how will the people who donot receive the donation feel when they get kicked of the show. they get given some hope and then have it crushed and in a fatal way because some of these contestants will die without ever receiving a transplant. i sure they don't actually do all of the workup tests and make sure everyone is a match aswell so it is pointless for most of those people aswell. this woman may as well not donate an organ because she will be crushing the spirits of more people she saves. however the drugs used to supress the immune system do have side effects of depression, weight gain, hair growth and some of the drugs also adversely affect the kidney if not balanced out with another drug.

It's not even sure yet if she can donate her kidney, because she has cancer and then there's the risk of metastasis (if that's the right English word I'm looking for).

Ironically, I remember reading a novel about 10 years ago that had a chapter that pictured almost this exact setting of a TV quiz having one organ donor and several people in need of said organ... it wasn't with the text message voting thing though, as we didn't really have that in the 90's. But I remember reading it and thinking what kind of an alien future vision it then seemed. Hello 2007...

Anyway, my thoughts on this...
Of course national and foreign media and politicians are tumbling over each other in their outcry, but I think BNN can manage to make this different than being the next Big Brother, one of our worst export products in history.

Bart de Graaff, TV host and founder of BNN, the public broadcast organisation that's going to host the show, had a chronic kidney disease and only lived to be around 35. At that age he still looked like a 12 year old boy, because the kidney disease had ceased his natural growing process. He had to wait for many years to receive a donor kidney, which only served him for a couple of years but eventually was rejected by his body and he died.






Now five years after his death, BNN are bringing the serious lack of organ donors in this country back to the national agenda. Of course it's very confrontational (they have a reputation for that) and you can definitely argue whether this is in good taste; I personally think it's not.

But at least the issue is right at the centre of the political debate again and I do think it could lead to more people offering their organs up for donation after they die. Even I have never filled out a donor form, when I have thought about doing so several times. If I happen to die next week, would my parents know 100% sure what my thoughts are on organ donation? No, because at my age I'm not really planning my own funeral yet. Even when my uncle died some years ago after having fought against cancer for about a year, it was only during the very last few days that he decided he wanted to be an organ donor. He never got to sign the papers because he was already too weak for that, but his verbal agreement with us and the doctor in the end was sufficient. The cancer hadn't left a single organ in his body useful for donation, but at least the cornea of his eyes have been succesfully transplanted onto someone else. Why don't we offer our organs up for donation more often? I'm pretty sure the majority of Dutch people who are calling this TV show unethical haven't signed a donor registration form themselves.

Because in the end, if they die, then the participants missing out on Lisa's kidney will not die because they lose out on this television kidney lottery. They will die because we, the TV-viewers in Holland, do not fill out a registration form to offer them our kidneys in the unfortunate event we'll die in a car crash tomorrow.

I'd support a reverse system like they have in Belgium, where everyone is liable to having their organs taken out for donation unless they have made it clear that they don't want to in advance.

I wonder how Lisa herself will feel about choosing one candidate out of these three people, although luckily for her at least she won't have many more years to spend feeling guilty about her decision.

If the Christian Democrats don't like it then they shouldn't watch; simple as that. I don't think I'll be watching either, but my guess is that it's not going to be similar to Big Brother, "The Golden Cage" or any of the other filth John de Mol is broadcasting on his own trash channel. BNN have made serious programs about chronic/lethal diseases before.


Nobody's going to read all that probably but that's what I think of it.

abc

wow, i just read the whole thread. my apologies for the stupid jokes, didn't realize there was a serious discussion going on here-- quite unusual, but yes.

i think the idea is a bit tasteless, i hate reality tv anyway, but if it increases awareness of the scarcity of organs for transplant, i think that tasteless tv can do some good for a change.

stem cell research being allowed could help drastically in these areas, if it were allowed properly with out all the misunderstanding then in the near future i could have my own organ grown and severly decrease the amount of medication one takes.

they should just go to Kidney's R' Us

thats where i got my one, with a full money back guarantee.

hey fishmonkey you are a fuckwit - i got mine from my mother and she nearly died on the operating table when donating it, it WAS a serious conversation.

i'm sorry.

ok...

i didnt mean it man, i'm just been my usual dickhead self using humour to be the irish outspoken smartass and as usual i exercise it before i even read down the thread. i didnt even read yr post man and i didnt realise what you went thru. it must of been awful for you and i appaude yr Ma for doing it for you. it must of been real nice to have yr Mother lay her life on the line for you like that.

apologies again. i kinda clam up when it comes to medical matters.

hm, i normally don't like to edit my posts but im deleting that silly photo.

so stem cells -- yes -- hopefully some country other than the u.s. will do this, because here, the ayatollahs are in power and it's not going to work.

I am for stem cell, I think it will help us in the near future.

I'm sorry to hear about that, TP. a problem with kidneys runs in the genes of my mother's family. she is the one that sbroke the chain and i'm safe, but the rest of the family all had kidney failure and had to undergo surgery and most of them were on list waiting for a donor. it's a fucked up situation.

i support stem cell search too.

This is extremely distasteful. Its appalling beyond words. How it can even be considered is beyond reason. But somehow it doenst surprise me.

I remember watching The Truman Show when it came out and thought it was nothing more than a parady of reality television. Because back then the idea that a television network would fabricate a world and lie to contestants about that the very nature of that world (Hello Channel 4's space cadet show) was unthinkable. Remember that scene when the old ladies stay up watching the live broadcast of Truman sleeping? I thought nobody but nutcases would watch something like that, until of course I turned to E4 and ITV2 to see celebrity and big brother contestants sleeping!....Live!!! Its Insane. Television is no more than a freak show nowadays. I really do not wanna even think about what they have in mind next.

Everyone gets their knickers in a twist about swearing and sex on television. Big fucking deal. Nobody seems to be giving 2 shits about the rapid de-intellectualization of the media. I suppose blaming janet jackson's tits for your children's problems is a lot easier.

yeah but you're missing the point.

this group is exploiting the reality tv format to bring a real social problem to the forefront. to me, that beats crying about the perpetual downward spiral of the media. rather than complain, they are doing something.

sordid, immoral, revolting... no word too strong ot define that shit. However, do you think that king buzzo will be the next entrant ?
Forget that, it's too stupid. I thought it was a joke when I saw the report the first time.

it is easy to blame janets boob because there is no complex though in her boob, television once could have been a great educational power for the world and it became a capitalist power. reality shows are cheap to make morons will go on them for their warhol minutes and it is also giving now respect to people who strive for their whole careers to be really great at what they do (actors) and places some talentless fucks and gives them a few years of fame and money for being a moron.

on the renal show are they just gonna have all the potential recipients sitting there for hours on hours hooked up to dialysis machines and popping pills and epo injections to keep them alive while they desperately wait for a cadaver or a live donor to give them a life sustaining gift...

I really dont think it is. I think thats just the producers trying to defend what is quite a sick programme. If they really cared there are so many different, more effective and appropriate angles they could take.

angles which wouldn't bring ratings nor attention. some boring pompous-ass "programme" that would be viewed by the 50 people who don't need to be educated on the matter?

i'm all in favor of subverting the media. you can't beat it, you have to join it, but in your own terms.

did you not read pokeherrie's posts about who is doing this??

yes but i'm not convinced. Big Brother started as programme with a few interesting psychological questions too, but soon turned into trash television. I think there are other ways to get ratings and raise awareness. The idea of texting into a television show giving advice as to who should live or die makes me uneasy.

well yeah being uneasy is the very fucking point. i think that more than a few people are going to sign donor cards during or after that show, tasteless as you might think it is.

frankly, i'd be more uneasy being one of the potential recipients than one of the pansy-ass uneasy viewers.

you've never seen a BNN program. They have a very special way of saying things, very direct, and they know how to touch difficult subjects. They've also for insstance made a series where they folllowed terminal ill children, I think that's won some international prizes.
It's certainly not going to be anything vulgar or dumb as Big Brother.
It's too late to write more, besides pokkeherrie descibed it well enough. I don't think I'm going to watch it, but perhaps I'll change my mind.

why doesn't the person who is donating the organ just do it anonymously like everyone else

Because the broadcasting organisation came up with this unreal Big Brother-like program and she agreed to participate in it. It's not about this particular woman, it's about 1000 people being on a waiting list for kidney transplantation. It's probably by far the easiest problem in healthcare to solve, yet every year hundreds of people die unnecessary because they don't get a donor organ. The newspaper today said that in all of Europe 40.000 people are on a waiting list for organ donation... 8 out of 10 Europeans support having a donor form, but only 12% has filled out a donor form.

But this program says implicitly : no waiting list, let the people vote for the one who inspire the most pity. The young child, or the old man ?
It's a terrible concept.
Will they show us the loser 's dead body in conclusion ?

No, we don't know what this program is going to be like until it's actually broadcast... if it's even broadcast at all.

It strucks me that every foreign newspaper and media outlet automatically interprets this as Endemol using people's misery for viewer ratings to make money. But they're not broadcasting it. BNN is a public broadcasting organisation who aren't depending on advertisement money and just commissioned Endemol (the same producer as Big Brother, which seems appropriate) to make it. I'd fear the worst if it was broadcast on commercial stations like John de Mol's Tien/Talpa or SBS6, but from BNN I expect them to make a serious program out of it. To be honest I don't even think they'll really turn it into a deathmatch ending one lucky winner and two losers... I'd be disappointed if they did and if they do then I'll be on your side. But noone knows anything until tomorrow. There are even rumours that there isn't even a program at all and it's just done for publicity. And what publicity do they already have... no less than 3 threads on the Sonic Youth board and even the European Commission are commenting on it. It's not just reached the Dutch parliament but also the European Parliament.

Fact is that people are already contacting BNN to donate one of their kidneys to the candidates that miss out on the kidney in the show. Another fact is that I myself have downloaded a donor form yesterday. Distasteful, unethical, terrible... call it what you want, but it's incredibly effective.

^^there you go

...there you go indeed. I saw the last 35-40 minutes of the programme.

There wasn't a kidney, it was a hoax. The "terminally ill" Lisa was an actress. The three participants in need of a kidney were very real, but in on the complot as well. Throughout the program they were telling about the problems and limitations they are experiencing daily and how much they need a donor kidney in order to live a normal life. The public voted by text messaging to advise "Lisa" whom to give the kidney to. At the same time they could text message free of costs to order a donor card. Then Lisa had to tell one of the candidates to leave. "Sorry, but I think the other two are more in need of a kidney". It sounded so cruel I just couldn't believe it was real. But just before the final decision was being announced the plot was revealed.

Utterly brilliant. High morality combined with the banality of reality TV. Provocative, groundbreaking, touching the limits of what is acceptable, but opening up the discussion on controversial issues. Typically BNN. They've done it again, but this time they didn't just shook Holland but much of the world as well. More than 100 foreign TV broadcasting organisations were present in the studio to report on this vile and sick show. I imagine they must've felt cheated when there wasn't anything juicy to report.

Now hopefully our politicians will put the same effort into helping reduce the donor shortage as they did in condemning this programme.

ha, sounds like they did a great job. i hope it has good results.