On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
> 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 . . .
_A Gift from Earth_, IIRC.
I could be wrong, though.
But not this time.
-- Ronn! :)
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