Kidney donor TV show planned

2007-05-26 19:45

The Hague - Dutch broadcaster BNN plans to air a television show next week where a terminally ill woman will decide who out of three young patients will get her kidney, Dutch media said o Saturday.

Viewers will be able to advise the 37-year-old woman, known as Lisa, via text messages which of the candidates to pick, the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper said. The show is scheduled for next Friday in a prime time spot.

BNN, whose former director died from kidney failure and spent years on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper that the show is meant to highlight the acute shortage of donors in the Netherlands.

The show is produced by Endemol, the Dutch entertainment power-house that invented the Big Brother television show in 1999.

Several transplant patient organisations and politicians have objected to The Big Donor Show.

"This is going in the direction of selling organs," a spokesperson for the Dutch Transplant Foundation told Algemeen Dagblad.

A Christian Democrat member of parliament on Saturday called on the Dutch ministers of healthcare and culture to stop the show.

In the Netherlands organ transplants are bound to strict rules. People are not allowed to choose who their organs will go to after they die.

But with kidney transplants - which can be carried out while the donor is still alive - they are allowed to choose, provided there is proof of a relationship between donor and recipient.

- AFP