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To: Blue House Sue

His excretion killed 10 people. Surely his internal organs must be worth something to save lives.Dads and evil spawns.


40 posted on 05/22/2018 2:29:55 PM PDT by ClearBlueSky (ISLAM is the problem. ISLAM is the enemy of civilization.)
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To: ClearBlueSky
His excretion killed 10 people. Surely his internal organs must be worth something to save lives.Dads and evil spawns.

Shades of Larry Niven's "Known Space" series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organlegging#The_organ_bank_problem

In Niven's universe, the technology to indefinitely sustain any human organ outside of the body was developed in the early 21st century, greatly simplifying organ transplants. This led to the creation of "organ banks" which, in theory, one could use to extend life indefinitely so long as a compatible organ had been donated at any point, as opposed to a complicated waiting list in combination with limited time to transport the organ to the recipient. In light of this, all forms of burial save complete harvesting of organs for transplant became illegal. This resulted in an increased quality of life, but quickly became its own problem; the banks required donors (i.e. dead people) to operate, but when the death rate is reduced (via the organ banks), the number of donors decreases. Thus, the supply of organs would continually reduce.

Compounding this problem, the high success rate of organ transplants tended to discourage research into other viable medical treatments. As a result, medical research was stagnated to a large extent, focusing primarily on improving transplants and little else. Repairing a failing organ (which could presumably fail again later) was considered secondary to the "complete" solution of replacing the failing organ.

An example in the Known Space universe was that anyone who wore eyeglasses was considered a reasonable candidate for an eye transplant (one or both); whereas in the real world, today's nearsighted population can solve the problem (temporarily) by wearing corrective lenses or (more permanently) by undergoing laser surgery.

On Earth, the problem led to a repressive society almost unrecognizable by today's standards. Since the average citizens wished to extend their lives, the world government sought to increase the supply by executing condemned criminals to supply the organ banks. When this failed to meet the demand, citizens would vote for the death penalty for more and more trivial crimes. First violent crimes, then theft, tax evasion, false advertising, and even traffic violations became punishable by the organ banks. This led to a disturbing discovery; in Niven's universe, many actions deemed "criminal" had a genetic propensity, and by harvesting these individuals for their organs, that propensity was eliminated from the gene pool. By the 22nd century, every crime on Earth merited the death penalty - but as a result of generations of summary execution, "Flatlander" psychology was irreversibly transformed into a society of near-total pacifism and submission to authority, which supplied no donors for the organ banks.

47 posted on 05/22/2018 2:36:06 PM PDT by Simon Green ("Arm your daughter, sir, and pay no attention to petty bureaucrats.")
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