Fake kidney donor

Television reality shows are not necessarily real. A dutch reality show features a dying lady who would donate her healthy kidney and 3 patients competing for the kidney for transplantation (BBC News). At the season finale of the show (would they make another season?), the allegedly dying woman turned out to be actually a healthy person, in contrast to the three patients in bad need of an external kidney. It isn't hard to guess that what will come next: yes, ethics debate. Critics said that the show are immorally making profit out of people who are really in need of help. The producers think differently. According to their rebuttal, the hoax of the show was designed in the way it was, and the purpose was to raise the attention to the scarcity of organ donors and the growing number of patients in need of one. Supporters commented on the outcome of the show, "although not true, it achieved its goal of raising attention to the issues".

I am not a big fan of reality show. To me, there is no point bringing reality onto the silver screen. If there are not one watching reality show, there will be no market. Maybe audiences are getting bored by the acting of real actors who wear make-up and recite screenplay, and thus turn to the emerging reality show for the "realness". The curiosity to peak into others life, in my opinion, is the real drive behind to watch reality show, which can summarized simply as "see if they are just like us".

Regardless of my attitude towards reality shows in general, I am on the side of the hoaxing show producer. That does not mean that I agree with their raise-attention-by-design explanation. TV show producers are profitable organizations. They won't do a thing without profitability. That's the bottomline. It's the after effect of the show that I think might worth a stay. Think of what is left over and will be discussed by folks after the show? They will be aware of the fact that patients are so desperate about an organ to transplant that even a fake donor can drive a competition. We all know that spare organs are not stuff that can be acquired easily in a supermarket. What we might not understand is the state of mind of a receptor to-be before they are assigned with a donor. After all, there are not many dying people around who would like to donate, but there are indeed far more people in the waiting list of spare parts, which would simply degrade when go underground. The show would reignites a second thought about the idea of preserving an intact body in afterlife. People might argue what a disappointment it is to the three participants in the show, knowing that none of them will be getting an organ no matter how hard they are competing. But as a patient waiting for organ, this is only a small challenge faced by many others everyday.