Ordering your Organs

Wearables, they are fun, useful and the promise us a lot regarding our own health. Our interest in wearables peaked in 2014 when Apple announced the AppleWatch. A watch like devices which measures several vitals like your heart rate. Besides that it allows an intimate connection between you and someone else by sending your heartbeat, it also has the potential (albeit with some extra sensors) to warn you for a heart attack or inform you that your liver is not functioning properly.

If your liver doesn’t function properly it needs to be replaced. You will be added to a waiting list of 120.000 people who are waiting for a transplantation. Many pass away before they even have a change to get a transplantation. An estimate of 900.000 lives could be saved each year if organs are preventative transplanted, but there are only 26.500 organs available (USA, 2013).

You got livercirosis due to your alcoholism? No problem, just order a new liver.

The Singularity University, cofounded by NASA and Google, launched a non-profit organisation who wants to solve this problem: The Organ Preservation Alliance, part of New Organ. This group of highly intellectual engineers made the first steps in creating a library for organs, organ banking as they call it. They want to take stem cells from newborns and use those cells to grow different organs. The organs are then cold stored in the organ library.

Imagine this: your AppleWatch gives you a push message saying your right kidney will fail within half a year and you could possibly die from the consequences. You check your agenda and you see that have your holiday in 4 weeks. Online you arrange an appointment with the hospital to replace your kidney during your holiday and The Organ Preservation Alliance makes sure your new kidney will be in the operation room on time.

From one perspective this is beautiful, you are no longer dependent on people who donate their organs. From another perspective this is frightening because this places ‘life’ and the ‘body’ in a different light. Smoking doe snot kill you anymore if you replace your lungs on a regular basis. You got livercirosis due to your alcoholism? No problem, just order a new liver. The body becomes an object. This could be the first step to a truly hedonistic lifestyle, without consequences.