'Why stop at televised job interviews when you can hand your audience the power of life and death?' Photograph: Christopher Furlong
It is hard to imagine where reality TV could go next. Transform talentless nobodies into equally talentless - but considerably richer - celebrities is one thing, but a Dutch TV station plans to take the redeeming power of junk TV to another level. Why stop at televised job interviews and talent contests when you can hand your audience the power of life and death?
The Big Donor Show will let its audience decide which of three patients in need of a new kidney will receive a transplant from Lisa, a 37 year old terminally ill cancer patient. "Yes ladies and gentlemen, keep those texts coming in for our three lovely contestants. They need your votes to avoid a long, drawn-out and horrible death." Saying this is in bad taste is like remarking that George Best enjoyed the odd glass of sherry.
In any case, why stop there? We could have the public vote on which ailing granny should be turfed out of her NHS bed to make way for a new patient. Or maybe defuse the Tory row over grammar schools by replacing the 11-plus with a TV vote? Better still, that bit in the Bible when Barabbas was released by the Romans was pretty good. How about letting the mob vote for a modern day Barabbas on US death row. The contestant with the most votes escapes the electric chair - keep calling, your votes really do count.
The programme makers' defence, that the one in three chance the contestants have is a good deal higher than they would have otherwise while true, does not change the fact that they are exploiting the patients and debasing their audience.
But it is true that transplant services are severely hampered by a shortage of donors. Here in the UK, around 9,000 are currently waiting for a transplant, but because of a chronic shortage of donors fewer than 3,000 transplants are carried out each year. Last year, more than 400 people died while on the organ-donor waiting list and many more do so before they even get on it.
The way around this is not a gimicky TV show but a change in the law from an opt-in system of organ donation to an opt-out system. The organs of people killed suddenly should be available to save lives as a matter of course unless they have specifically requested that their organs should not be used. You can join the NHS organ donor register by calling 0845 60 60 400.
