On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Deborah Harrell wrote:
> > Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Deborah Harrell wrote: > > > > >Debbi > > >whose stance on convicted murderers getting organ > > >transplants *could* be described as Puritanical... > > ;) > > > > How about _donating_, ala Larry Niven? > > While I haven't read much of his stuff (did he write > the Amber series?
No, that was Zelazny.
> which I fear I only remember for the > lava-lamp references and hellriding), I wouldn't > support involuntary organ donation on anybody's part. > I don't really think a prisoner could be considered > "uncoerced" in any 'organ donation for reduced > sentence' either. Blood or marrow donation, being > replenishable by the body, might be another category. > Although not all people are suitable donors even of > those, WRT various diseases.
Read "The Jigsaw Man". It's in _Tales of Known Space_.
Heck, if you find it, read _The Patchwork Girl_. I have it as its own book, and it's also in _Flatlander_. (_Flatlander_ is fairly easily available, actually.)
Now, if you don't the inclination to hunt these down, I'm sure someone will be happy to do some summarizing for you.
The short answer is that Niven wrote a whole series of short stories and novels around the premise that at some point in the relatively near future, most problems with tissue matching and rejection as well as with organ storage have been overcome, and with more and more people living to older and older ages because they can have organs replaced as they fail, at some point the laws are changed to make the official method of capital punishment being to be rendered unconscious and then disassembled for parts. Then, because the demand for healthy organs still far outstrips the supply, more and more crimes are made capital offenses. There is also a black market which abducts people on the street, murders them, and sells their organs to those who cannot get the organs they need from the government-run organ banks. Eventually a solution is found in that a method to grow new organs in vitro from cell cultures is perfected, bringing an end to the need for filling the organ banks by removing organs from other people, and there's a whole novel about the changes when that technology finally reaches one of the outlying colonies about which I can remember almost everything right now except the title . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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