The organ trail

Here’s what I don’t like about America. We never take it to the extreme.\nI wish, just once, this country could crack a Dew the size of Canada, slam it while snowboarding down South America, and launch that into a reverse slam dunk over Australia. Now that would be extreme. \nOr at the very least, I want a free market of human body parts. You heard me correctly. I want kidneys more affordable than caviar, and I want livers to flow like the wine that destroys them. What I’m saying is I want to trade surgery for solace – financial solace, of course – as if there were any other kind.\nThis is outlandish, you say? How appalling a thought, you scoff? Well how about the legislators in South Carolina that are proposing up to six months sliced off a sentence if inmates are willing to donate an organ or bone marrow? This is no joke. It’s actually about to be argued. \nThis gets back to my original beef with America being too afraid to take it to the extreme. Of course, the compassionate supporters of “human rights” are all up in arms about this proposal, and the chances of it passing are slim to none. But I say it’s time America busts a bottle over its own head and makes the conscious decision to push it to the limit. \nChina took the extremist stance on this baby by carrying out 80 percent of the world’s executions in 2006 and harvesting the thousands and thousands of sweet, profitable organs. So it would seem that the best we can hope for is second-most-extreme, but that hardly sounds American. \nI say we take this one step further than the current legislation in South Carolina. They are a coastal state; I say you construct a giant catapult. When a convict is found guilty, they are walked out to the catapult and given the following option: “Donate an organ or be launched into the Atlantic.” \nIt’s just that simple.\nThis may even push us past those super-extreme Chinese. Not only does it prove we are even more committed to harvesting organs, but it would prove we are more serious about capital punishment, too. \nThe other extreme would be to completely outlaw bodily transfer of any kind. But I am pretty sure that would mean outlawing sex, and we’re not that extreme. So I’m afraid we are left with no other option than the giant catapult.\nLook, it’s perfectly obvious what is going on here. Some real visionaries realized that sick people need organs, and criminals need a desperate false sense of freedom. They put two and two together and made this proposal. Where they went wrong is that they started bowing down to the “center-of-the-road,” “smooth-and-steady,” “snoozefest central” legislators out there that demanded these donations be “voluntary” and “safe.”\nI say we march them out on that catapult and tell them, “Vote yes, or it’s into the Atlantic with you.”\nSeriously, somebody in South Carolina really needs to start drawing up blueprints for a giant catapult. Then we can get down to some serious business. Seriously extreme business!