Today there was a lengthy article in the New York Times titled ‘Who Is The Bad Art Friend?’ The TL;DR version is that some Turd Sandwich donated a kidney through one of those ‘anybody need a kidney’ programs. It seems they wanted a smidge of adulation for it. Then Giant Douche was an acquaintance of Turd Sandwich and wrote a story about kidney donation that appeared- to Turd Sandwich- to be loosely based on their life. There was some evidence that Giant Douche plagiarized a few lines of Turd Sandwich’s writing.
The article is nearly goddamn ten thousand words, and I bring this up not to decide for you who’s the Bad Art Friend (because the answer in Redditese is “everyone sucks here”). I bring this up to segue into a discussion of the thriving kidney black market.
Today’s Moment of Science… Organ harvesting, cults, and the cost of a kidney.
Humans have (unsuccessfully) attempted organ transplants for a while, with records of skin grafts as early as the second century BCE. Tissues and arteries were transplanted with varying degrees of non-success starting in the late 1800s, but our first modern breakthrough was in 1954. Before then, organ recipients hadn’t lived much longer than one sickly month. In this case, Ronald Herrick donated a kidney to his identical twin brother, Richard Herrick. Their exact match gave Richard another eight years of life.
This provided scientists with new questions; what made this donation work where others had failed? Much like when dealing with a miserable bastard of virus, the immune system sees a donated organ as an invader to be yeeted the fuck out. Since most people don’t have an identical copy of themselves out there, getting the immune system to chill while sorting a way to match people without a twin was the next step.
How does your body recognize that some non-you stuff got past the guards? The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is how the immune system stamps a “this piece of ass is a piece of my ass” sign on the surface of your cells. In a functioning system, this tells the immune system to leave its own body the hell alone. But if it finds a cell with a “this is Craig’s liver” sign, fuck Craig, he’s out. Which isn’t great if Craig loaned you a chunk of liver.
The advent of a suite of immunosuppressants in the late twentieth century changed that. Because it’s true that the technology exists to determine if a perfect match is out there. But a darn tootin good match plus immunosuppressant medications has allowed transplant technology to extend a lot more lives in recent decades.
If you need a replacement part now, it’s likely the current technology we have can make it happen. That is, if the parts are available.
This is about to take a turn, so.
You may have seen advertisements for Shen Yun, a performing arts group that promotes themselves as a “presentation of traditional Chinese culture.” You will indeed get some Chinese folklore in their song and dance roadshow. It’s also a propaganda outlet to tell you that atheism is bad, evolution is a lie, the gays are ruining everything, aliens came to Earth, say no to drugs, and you shouldn’t do the sex.
Uh… did I mention there’s acrobatics and tumbling?
Shen Yun is run by members of the Falun Gong, a religious movement that got its start in China in the 1990s and quickly grew to 70 million members. A scene in their show depicts Chinese communist police officers beating members of the group, which is about as close as their show flirts with reality.
Though estimates vary, investigations have put the number of Falun Gong members who were killed for organs in China somewhere between 150,000 and 1.5 million from 2000 to 2016. It should be of little surprise that evidence supporting similar accusations has surfaced with regards to China’s treatment of Uighurs and other minorities in detention.
There will never be a shortage of people who need an organ replaced. Leaving the system as it is will continue to support the desperation that creates the black market. Legalizing cash for spare parts might not feel like an ethical idea, but I’m not sure how it’s ethical to stop a transaction that can save a life when you can legally give that same kidney for free.
Australia and Singapore recently joined Iran in legalizing monetary compensation for living organ donors. A kidney in Iran goes for a standard fee (the recipient generally contributes some extra) and this has reportedly eliminated the waitlist for the organ.
We could leave the system as is because this feels icky or we can try literally anything else. Until then, they sounded like an utter pain in the ass but we could use more Turd Sandwiches.
This has been your Moment of Science, just throwing it out there that you should probably check ‘organ donor’ on your driver’s license.
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