[Ninong]

In a previous thread, I posted the following comment on June 22, 2005:

Nothing but reality TV round the clock, non-stop! No need to pay screenwriters or actors!

Who wants to marry a millionaire? How about "Who Wants to Adopt Me?" Ten cute orphans compete to see which of them the nice, wealthy suburbanite couple will adopt. The home viewing audience gets to call in and vote. Then the next week, we get to see which cute little tyke gets the ax and goes crying off the stage. Wouldn't that be special?

How about "Who Most Deserves a Kidney Transplant?" Same format except that not all of the contestants would be expected to live long enough to see the final outcome of the contest.

From MSNBC.com's What Were They Thinking?

• A Dutch broadcaster will air a game show this week in which a terminally ill woman selects a recipient for her kidneys from three contestants, despite government calls for the program to be scrapped.

Newspaper De Telegraaf said BNN would broadcast The Big Donor Show on Friday during which the 37-year-old woman will choose from three people with kidney problems.

She will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversations with their families and friends. Viewers will be able to send text messages advising her during the 80-minute show.

"The chance for a kidney for the contestants is 33 percent. This is much higher than that for people on a waiting list. You would expect it to be better but it is worse," the daily cited BNN Chairman Laurens Drillich as saying.

Ruling coalition parties Christian Democrat and the conservative Christian Union have called the show "wretched" and unethical. But BNN says it wants to highlight the difficulties faced by kidney sufferers in getting donor organs.

That's good, otherwise people might think it's just a sleazy ploy to boost audience ratings.

P.S. -- The author of that story is incorrect in saying that the terminally ill woman will be selecting a recipient for her "kidneys," plural. She will be selecting a recipient for one of her kidneys. She will then undergo surgery while she is still alive to donate that kidney to the lucky recipient.

Her other kidney, should she leave a will including organ donor instructions, will go to someone who is next in line on the list, just as it would in this country. Under Dutch law, you cannot specify a particular recipient for any organs you wish to donate after your death. You can only do that while you are alive during the transplant process.

The hospital would refuse to remove both kidneys from a living person. In any event, the original story makes it clear that the woman is donating only one kidney at this time, not both of them. Whoever wrote the story for MSNBC.com screwed it up.

[Ninong]

It was a hoax!

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A television show in which a woman would donate a kidney to a contestant was revealed as a hoax Friday. Presenters said they were trying to pressure the government into reforming organ donation laws.

At the last moment, presenters of the "Big Donor Show" said the woman was not actually dying of a brain tumor as claimed and the entire exercise was intended to add pressure on the government and to raise public awareness of the need for organs.

The three prospective recipients were real patients in need of transplants and had been in on the hoax, the show said.