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Sunday, June 3, 2007

and now, for the rest of the story

I'm really starting to get pissed off at the Dutch. Not all off them. Just a few particular ones.
It turns out, that whole reality TV show Kidney giving away stupid idea?
A hoax.
The woman with the "brain tumor" is a healthy actress. The presenters of the show were trying to pressure the government into reforming the donor laws. The three recepiants are actually in need of a kidney, still, but the presenters claim they were in on the joke.
This puts a whole new spin on it for me. I still think this is pretty trashy. Even worse, actually, because now its a total manipulation. If you want new donor laws, round up everyone in Holland who needs a transplant and have them show up at the capital, and sit there. Have them send postcards every day, have their families show up too. I don't know. But not this. It was a stupid stunt. I'm glad that this is not actually going to happen, but still, its smarmy.

4 comments:

CamiKaos said...

i understand the use of extreme tacticts to make progress but that is lame. I hope the did "contestants" know. THe real victims are people dying from organ failure and their families who had a spark of hope.

I am curious just in what way they were trying to reform the law? By adding circus antics to it?

David in DC said...

I disagree. When I first heard about the show, I was repulsed.

But if everyone, including the recipients, was in on the hoax, I think it's brilliant. No one was hurt and they made their point more effectively than a bunch of post cards.

Way more people in the world are talking about the scarcity of donor organs then a postcard writing campaign in the Netherlands would have sparked.

And no one was hurt.

A whole lotta people were fooled, but no one was hurt. And now everybody's talking. Everywhere. The crisis of donor organ scarcity is a real one.

I don't get what they did wrong.

(All of this assumes the recipients were indeed in on the gag. If not, it was unspeakably cruel.)

mielikki said...

my problem, is all the other donor's in Holland didn't know the hoax, and what about their families? And, it kind of gave negative publicity to the whole problem. But, I guess negative publicity is better than none at all. And, all these people of Holland, calling in, believing that an organ was going to be provided. I just think there was a better way to go about the whole thing.

Rachel said...

I think that it was definitely a way to get people talking about the issue. I don't condone it, but it achieved their goal.
The laws in Holland dictate that you must be a friend or relative of the patient to be able to donate a kidney.
I agree that with this kind of restriction that there are people dying that could potentially survive with a transplant from a willing stranger.
I don't know what their organ donor laws are either.