D
drice
Guest
A Modest Proposal on the Future of
Human Organ Farming.
Trick or Treat- Clown or Clone
In the future, for those who can afford it, Labs will grow clones that can be used to supply duplicate organs to replace body parts for people as they age, or in case of emergencies. Each clone will be a genetic match to an individual so they can be used in transplants without being attacked by that person’s immune system. Those who contract with the Clone Labs to have genetic duplicates of their organs on “call” are known as Prime Subscribers. With recent advancements in genetic engineering, this method for growing human organs using human clones has proved more efficient than using other animal species as organ sources, an approach that was tried in the 1990s.
The Prime Subscribers’ clones are to be grown as headless embryos, without a brain or a central nervous system, so that they are not legally “human” and will never be able to live outside of the Lab. The cloned embryos develop all the other body parts, including a heart and circulatory system and lungs and digestive systems. (Economy model embryos have also been developed that do not have a digestive system and are slightly easier to grow in the Lab; nutrients are injected directly into the bloodstream and wastes drawn out of the blood by dialysis. These models of course provide fewer organs for possible use.)
Human embryos become suitable sources for adult organs in about 15 years. When these embryo cloning techniques were first developed in Britain in the late 1990s, the embryos had to be destroyed after 5 days or be legally classed as “living agricultural animals”. But as the technology advanced and the potential for humans became clear, laws were revised. Now, clones for the Prime Subscribers are grown to match each stage of a child’s or adult’s development, so that organs are available on an emergency basis throughout the Subscriber’s lifespan. Since the clone’s body parts do age at the normal rate, to ensure youth and freshness in the body parts several clones for each Prime Subscriber will be kept in the Lab at a time: “prime” clones ready to use as needed, clones about to enter the “prime” stage to replace others that are “retired,” plus new clones that are just starting and will need more than a decade to mature.
Such a level of service, of course, can be afforded only by a few. Others, known as Secondary Subscribers, can afford only to rely on Labs that merely store human organs culled from the general population and organized by blood type and other genetic factors so that the best approximate genetic fit may be found. With recent advances in immune-system therapy, however, the success rate of these transplants has greatly increased and is now close to 80%.
How do the Labs get such a supply of organs for the Secondary Subscribers? By culling them from a population that can afford neither of these services an underclass beneath the healthcare system that is willing to be paid money to donate a kidney, a lung, a good working knee or eye (replaced by a cut-rate duplicate). Organ Donor Centers are prominent in impoverished urban and rural sites throughout the country; in fact, there’s a clear ratio between a low number of banks and supermarkets and a high number of Donor Centers, Blood Banks, and Check-Cashing Services.
Sometimes the demand for organs exceeds the supply. Then the Labs hire Procurement Specialists, known on the street as Snatchers, to gather new specimens. These involuntary donors, or Sources, can usually be anaesthetized so quickly they have few memories of being approached. (An injectable anesthesia product that works very well, Memzac, has been developed by Glaxo Pfiz Allegra Welcomm Corporation.) And thanks to the latest anti-scarring surgery techniques, most Sources can be returned to the streets with little or no awareness that they are missing a kidney or lung or a few leg tendons. Waking up on a park bench or elsewhere with little memory of how they got there, they may notice they are shorter of breath than they used to be or that a joint suddenly feels more arthritic; a glance in the mirror may reveal that the colors of their eyes’ irises no longer quite match. Still, Lab surveys have shown that unless it’s been a botched “pick-up” that left bad memory traces, most Sources can’t detect what happened. They attribute it to sleeping poorly the night before, or to old age, poor memory, or all of the above.
An early chronicle of some of these new developments in Organ Harvesting appeared not in the Web news media services but in an old-fashioned printed book, a novel, and one that also purported to unveil ancient prophesies written on parchment: Leslie Marmon Silko, The Almanac of the Dead (1991).
Human Organ Farming.
Trick or Treat- Clown or Clone
In the future, for those who can afford it, Labs will grow clones that can be used to supply duplicate organs to replace body parts for people as they age, or in case of emergencies. Each clone will be a genetic match to an individual so they can be used in transplants without being attacked by that person’s immune system. Those who contract with the Clone Labs to have genetic duplicates of their organs on “call” are known as Prime Subscribers. With recent advancements in genetic engineering, this method for growing human organs using human clones has proved more efficient than using other animal species as organ sources, an approach that was tried in the 1990s.
The Prime Subscribers’ clones are to be grown as headless embryos, without a brain or a central nervous system, so that they are not legally “human” and will never be able to live outside of the Lab. The cloned embryos develop all the other body parts, including a heart and circulatory system and lungs and digestive systems. (Economy model embryos have also been developed that do not have a digestive system and are slightly easier to grow in the Lab; nutrients are injected directly into the bloodstream and wastes drawn out of the blood by dialysis. These models of course provide fewer organs for possible use.)
Human embryos become suitable sources for adult organs in about 15 years. When these embryo cloning techniques were first developed in Britain in the late 1990s, the embryos had to be destroyed after 5 days or be legally classed as “living agricultural animals”. But as the technology advanced and the potential for humans became clear, laws were revised. Now, clones for the Prime Subscribers are grown to match each stage of a child’s or adult’s development, so that organs are available on an emergency basis throughout the Subscriber’s lifespan. Since the clone’s body parts do age at the normal rate, to ensure youth and freshness in the body parts several clones for each Prime Subscriber will be kept in the Lab at a time: “prime” clones ready to use as needed, clones about to enter the “prime” stage to replace others that are “retired,” plus new clones that are just starting and will need more than a decade to mature.
Such a level of service, of course, can be afforded only by a few. Others, known as Secondary Subscribers, can afford only to rely on Labs that merely store human organs culled from the general population and organized by blood type and other genetic factors so that the best approximate genetic fit may be found. With recent advances in immune-system therapy, however, the success rate of these transplants has greatly increased and is now close to 80%.
How do the Labs get such a supply of organs for the Secondary Subscribers? By culling them from a population that can afford neither of these services an underclass beneath the healthcare system that is willing to be paid money to donate a kidney, a lung, a good working knee or eye (replaced by a cut-rate duplicate). Organ Donor Centers are prominent in impoverished urban and rural sites throughout the country; in fact, there’s a clear ratio between a low number of banks and supermarkets and a high number of Donor Centers, Blood Banks, and Check-Cashing Services.
Sometimes the demand for organs exceeds the supply. Then the Labs hire Procurement Specialists, known on the street as Snatchers, to gather new specimens. These involuntary donors, or Sources, can usually be anaesthetized so quickly they have few memories of being approached. (An injectable anesthesia product that works very well, Memzac, has been developed by Glaxo Pfiz Allegra Welcomm Corporation.) And thanks to the latest anti-scarring surgery techniques, most Sources can be returned to the streets with little or no awareness that they are missing a kidney or lung or a few leg tendons. Waking up on a park bench or elsewhere with little memory of how they got there, they may notice they are shorter of breath than they used to be or that a joint suddenly feels more arthritic; a glance in the mirror may reveal that the colors of their eyes’ irises no longer quite match. Still, Lab surveys have shown that unless it’s been a botched “pick-up” that left bad memory traces, most Sources can’t detect what happened. They attribute it to sleeping poorly the night before, or to old age, poor memory, or all of the above.
An early chronicle of some of these new developments in Organ Harvesting appeared not in the Web news media services but in an old-fashioned printed book, a novel, and one that also purported to unveil ancient prophesies written on parchment: Leslie Marmon Silko, The Almanac of the Dead (1991).