A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

Many years ago, a British comedian called Tony Hancock broadcast a sketch called The Blood Donor on a BBC Radio programme called Hancock's Half Hour. This coming Friday(1/6/2007) a Dutch television station, BNN, are going to broadcast a live show called The Big Donor. The trouble is that this show is anything but comedic in its content. It is very real and it is the latest creation from reality TV producers Endemol who brought us Big Brother, which is about to start its eighth series in the UK despite the controversy surrounding the recent celebrity edition of the show.

The Big Donor is television at its very worst and BNN claim to be broadcasting it as tribute to station founder Bart de Graaf who died of kidney failure five years ago, and also to highlight the challenges of finding donor organs for transplant. A 37 year-old woman with a terminal illness is to choose a recipient for her kidneys from three patients awaiting transplant surgery, and her choice will be aided by the public who will be able to send text messages in to the show (duration 80 minutes) to "advise" her on her choice. This kind of TV beggars belief! Two people in need of transplant surgery are going to end the evening knowing that their chance of finding a donor match may have passed them by and that they may not get another chance at being able to live a normal healthy life. I'm surprised that Endemol and BNN haven't arranged for the transplant surgery to be done on live TV when the time comes, or maybe an eight week long reality bonanza aired three times a day to enable the public to watch the 37 year-old donor as her life ebbs away.

I cannot believe that the donor is being given the power to make a decision about who is to receive her kidneys on her passing. The only persons qualified to make this decision are the doctors and the surgeon who will do the transplant, and there is still no guarantee that the recipient's body will not reject the organs at a later date. Instead, we will see a decision based on anything and everything but the medical needs of the intended recipients, and a decision that should be made in private, not aired to a nation on live TV. Endemol and BNN are playing God with the lives of four people, exercising the power of Life and Death in the name of informative entertainment, and they are overstepping the mark by a country mile. Endemol in particular have been pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in television and I personally feel that this time they have really gone too far. I don't pretend to know anything about either Dutch or International Law, but as far as I know, the trading of human body parts for transplant is illegal. Endemol will certainly profit financially from this programme, the only question is whether they can be seen to be profiting from a trade in human body parts, and whether anyone in a position of authority will do anything about it.

With the new series of Big Brother starting today (30/05/2007) in the UK I would suggest that all contestants beware. Viewers may be asked to vote on which body parts are to be removed from the contestants prior to their respective evictions from the Big Brother House. Anything is possible where Endemol are concerned. They are certainly not strangers in the Broadcasting Regulator's office and I'm sure that they already have their next appointment booked. With the furore of the racism row surrounding the recent celebrity edition of Big Brother still hanging in the air it is possible, just possible, that Endemol have sewn the seeds of their own destruction. Tonight they will make the first of three public apologies about the celebrity edition, not because they want to but because the Regulator has stamped his foot and told them to do so. I suspect that they may be the first of many. Endemol should have no place in television and the best way to vote is by switching channels.