Dutch Organs show: Sick? Or the lesser of two evils?

Oh how terrible, was the first reaction. Julia Raeside in The Guardian spoke for our nation:

Endemol is at it again. The streaker on the pitch of the television industry is back in the news thanks to its latest production for Dutch TV. On Friday, De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) will give three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney. Who lives? You decide. Actually, the terminally ill woman will decide with the aid of SMS input from the viewers. Which taboo subject can Dutch TV exploit next without being taken off air?

Yeah, how sick. How grotesque. How very Endemol of Endemol. And in a rare show of media bipartisanship, The Guardian’s comment pages mirrored Daily Mail stories with headlines like this:

A new kidney would change my life, but I'd rather wait ten years than win one like this

But then our friend Chris Dillow disagreed, and after reading his blog for the past year, it’s possible that Mr Dillow has never been wrong about anything. So it’s worthwhile hearing out his opinion:

Tom Watson says Endemol is "sick." No, Tom. What's sick is that people are dying because of the shortage of kidneys - a shortage exacerbated by the refusal of our managerialist rulers to consider using markets. Endemol is merely publicizing this fact. Whilst there is such a shortage, kidneys have to be rationed somehow. In practice, this means doing so by luck and by medical protocols that discriminate against the mentally ill. It's not obvious that rationing according to popular vote is much worse than this…

None of this, of course, is to defend Endemol. They're doing it just for the money. But we've known ever since Adam Smith that, sometimes people who are motivated by money can inadvertently do good.

And Mike Wallace pipes up with this thought:

Doctors have been up in arms about the idea that the donor should be involved in the decision at all. To quote Prof. John Feehally, formerly President of the UK Renal Association,

"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."

Except it isn’t, is it? It’s a woman deciding what should happen with her own vital organs—if anyone is going to “play God” about dishing out your internal bits and bobs, shouldn’t you yourself get first go? Professor Feehally’s objection is hardly any different. The idea that doctors can play God seems to be fine with him, even if the same right is perversely not extended to the donor herself.

You see, once you've framed your arguments as pro-free markets, pro-personal freedoms, and anti-Tom Watson, I find it hard to disagree. My righteous indignation has been quelled. Maybe yours will be too if you read both the Wallace piece and Dillow’s post in full.

Murad Ahmed

Comments

[Hip Gnosis]

"But then our friend Chris Dillow disagreed, and after reading his blog for the past year, it’s possible that Mr Dillow has never been wrong about anything."

But then our friend Hip Gnosis came along and read the blog post, and after leaving a participle dangling forever,