Flatlander - Larry Niven [155]
One tells of an interschool debating competition. The question: Shall condemned criminals be executed by dismantling, the parts to be reserved for organ transplants? The reader who informed me was horrified: the majority voted yes.
You can watch the future fanning out in three directions. Transplanted organs succeed more often and the patients live longer, but prosthetic, devices seem to be improving even faster. You don’t need a knee transplant; the artificial version is better. Your artificial heart could survive you.
The third choice isn’t generating news, but it’s important. Clone and grow your own replacement organs! Rejection wouldn’t be a problem. You would have to grow what you need before it’s urgent, and if you didn’t prepare … then your need for a new liver is no act of God, but your own damned fault. Now whom shall we break up?
One evening last month, I got a phone call from George Scithers. He followed up with newspaper clippings. India has been disassembling condemned criminals for transplants since 1964.
The practice is informal. Donor has been condemned to death. Method: bullet in the neck. Afterward the doctors can have him. But the executioner shoots badly, so the organs are taken while Donor still lives.
Transplants are usually rejected because the Indian doctors don’t bother much with matching types. But, by God, they’re fresh. And you can’t blame Larry Niven for pointing out the possibilities.
They’re doing it in China, too. A photocopied page in my mail tells me how to get a brochure on the subject from Human Rights Watch, Publicity Department. “Discusses evidence demonstrating that China’s heavy reliance on executed prisoners as a source of transplant organs entails a wide range of human rights and medical ethics violations.”
Organlegging in our own cities is today’s news: unwilling donors found bleeding in the streets, kidneys and hearts missing.
Meanwhile, Bill Rotsler’s quadruple-bypass operation moved veins from his legs into his heart. No rejection problem. My own knee is healing nicely from an operation that didn’t involve scalpels, just a laser to burn out a torn meniscus. The woman undergoing physical therapy on the stationary bike next to me is doing fine as her flesh heals around a fully artificial knee. Stay tuned. We’re shaping the future now.
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Copyright © 1995 by Larry Niven
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v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Inside Job
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Part 1 - Death by Ecstasy
Part 2 - The Defenseless Dead
Part 3 - Arm
Part 4 - Patchwork Girl
Part 5 - The Woman in Del Rey Crater
Part 6 - Afterword
Copyright