Got a liver? A kidney? Maybe a spare lung or heart? Come here, do I have a deal for you!

That very odd Regressive (Liberal/Progressvive) Robert F Kennedy Jr. is at it again. Angering his erstwhile comrades. (Who, like 1950s era American Communists, expelled him before he turned bad, of course.) Who delights not just in MAGA but MAHA, and who apparently is not embarrassed too much to admit a mistake.

What this time? He is overseeing a deep digging investigation of the American organ donation system. And making recommendations for reforms of what is now revealed as a very corrupt system. One in which money, influence, and even political and religious matters serve to determine who lives… and who dies.

Thanks to the close connections of the governments and the health care industry, it does not surprise us to find that it is rife with corruption. Both the monetary sort of corruption and the corruption of prejustice: the wrong sex, the wrong “race,” the wrong socio-economic status, and the wrong political stance.

Perhaps the greatest evil being revealed in the American (and world) system of gaining human organs for transplant to save lives is that lives are often being taken – certainly prematurely – in order to gain the precious organs. Permissions are forged, and critically, what could be life-saving measures are denied so that the organs will be “clean” and immediately available.

Tied in with the powerful incentive of money – if not for themselves then for their institutions or companies. Organ transplants are a multi-billion dollar industry. And that kind of money creates major problems, both in the States and far byond.

It is not quite as bad here in the States as it is in China, where people are convicted and then used as a ready “on-the-hoof” herd of organ suppliers. Not voluntary:demand drives the authorities to take action to provide the needed lungs, liver, etc. Not just for the Party faithful at home, but apparently for many foreign recepients.

It reminds us a lot of fiction. One that had a seering impact on us.

“The Jigsaw Man” is a 1967 short story by American science fiction writer Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe. The story explores the theme of organ transplants derived from criminals.

In this future society, individuals convicted of capital offenses are executed and their organs are harvested for transplantation, a practice institutionalized to meet the high demand for organs. This demand leads to seeing the legal threshold for execution being lowered over time to include more and more crimes, even what today would be misdemeanors: minor crimes. 

The story’s protagonist, facing a conviction for repeated traffic violations, escapes prison and attempts to commit a significant crime to make his death meaningful, only to be recaptured and tried solely on his original, minor offense. 

This narrative, along with other works in Niven’s series like A Gift From Earth, examines the ethical and societal implications of a system where the organ supply is maintained through the execution of criminals, a concept that has influenced subsequent science fiction and discussions on organ donation. Unlike Solyent Green, the Jigsaw Man has never had a big audience. Perhaps it should have.

When more and more parts of modern society are showing signs of a casual disregard for human life? The fears of just such a thing should be with us at all times. We are not that many decades removed from the killing fields of Cambodia, or even the Dritte Reich. And we certainly can see that deplorable and all too human propensity in the cartel wars of Mexico and the battlefields of Ukraine. Most clearly, we can see that in the abortion clinics of Europe and the States.