Dutch kidney donor TV show in poor taste: EU
A European Commission spokesman yesterday criticised a planned television reality show in which a terminally ill woman decides to whom to donate a kidney as being in “rather bad taste.”
“It seems in rather bad taste to do a reality TV show on something like this, which is after all a very serious issue,” said Philip Tod, spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Marko Kyprianou.
Dutch viewers will be able to advise the 37-year-old woman, known as Lisa, via text messages which of three young patients to pick for her organ donation in the show scheduled for next Friday in a prime time spot.
Dutch broadcaster 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.
European Commission spokesman Tod told a press conference in Brussels that the EU’s executive arm would today unveil proposals “to improve cooperation between member states to enhance both the quality and the safety of organ donations and transplants in Europe so that we can increase the availability of organs for transplant in Europe”.
Source: AFP via the Peninsula
