The Big Donor Show

[franceslievens]

A couple of days ago it was all over the media: Dutch television network BNN would broadcast The Big Donor Show on Friday. The whole show would revolve around a terminally ill woman who would give away one of her kidneys. BNN (never scared of a bit of controversy) would use this show as a way to remember the death of their founder Bart De Graaf, who died five years ago while on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. In one swoop they also wanted to reopen the debate on donors in the Netherlands. The comparison can be quickly made: in Belgium you are a donor, unless you say you don't want to, in the Netherlands you have to state you want to be donor. As a consequence waiting lists in the Netherlands are longer.
The idea behind the show was soon redeemed unethical. A general outcry against asked for prohibition, but the show did nothing wrong according to Dutch law. They did however succeed in getting the assembled international press interested and 1.8 million viewers attached to the screen when was revealed the terminally ill woman was actualy an actress and that they would give no kidney away this evening. The complete show had been a hoax. The three patients however, were real and knew from the start there was no kidney to give away.

It's the second time in a short period that a fake broadcast is made to stir up a debate. Have we become imune for the less televisionised problems of the world? Are we unable to have a decent conversation with arguments and well thought through opinions? And most of all, how comes we tend to believe such unbelievable scenarios when they happen on tv?

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I was rather sceptical when I heard about it - I'd read somewhere that the terminally ill woman was supposed to be suffering from cancer and it seemed to my totally medically ignorant self to be rather strange that she'd be allowed to donate her organs. So, I sort of shook my head and stopped thinking about it.

Strangely enough, organ donation has been debated here, too - without any shock tactics and while it wasn't exactly water cooler talk (which this television surely generated), it was in the spotlight for a while - with arguments and opinions and so on.

Though if an issue is not widely reported in the media, it doesn't get a lot of debate. Make a feature film about it and people might notice it - blood diamonds, global warming what have you.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I think I did the same thing. Something in my head said: "Why is she donating organs when she's terminally ill? How does that work?" And then I simply walked away, because I didn't feel like having an opinion. I never seem to want to get to the bottom of something. But neither do our journalists, because how come they weren't sceptical about it?

There is no debate going on here. I think that stems from the fact that everyone is considered a donor. Although I do believe there has been some talk about getting more people to become bone marrow donor. The matches they find sometimes opt out due to the operation involved.