The Organ Donors

The Organ Donors

141,666 words

by Robin C. Rickards

EXCERPT

Dr. Helmut von Kleinert had watched the beating with an intensity. “You see, Peter…Now you can appreciate what genetic manipulation can really do. These animals are so human, they are even beginning to act human…Like two street gangs on a Saturday night prowl…Out for blood!”

There had been a killing. A real murder, Peter Gregg liked to call it. The rocks on the outcrop were soaked with blood and tufts of gray hair, strewn about. Twists of red meat clung to the branches of a small tree where they had snagged after being torn away by the crazed animals. It was the final pitch of the battle that was most memorable…..The dying male shrieked as the leader of the pack plunged its jaws into his groin, pulling and tearing, then bounding away with his prey’s testicles clutched between his teeth.

Peter smiled, his eyes closed, dreaming about that day, the adrenalin rush. The baboons didn’t frighten him. They were unique and brave animals. They had to be. How else could they keep watch over those creatures…..Those animals that Dr. Sandberg had claimed were human beings. He shuddered. Those monkeys…..Those creepy monkeys!

SYNOPSIS

Hearts, kidneys, livers – in the real world, modern medicine has already begun to use organs, torn from the bodies of less than human creatures to save human lives. But these animal organs, coated with proteins recognized as foreign by the human body’s immune system have all been rejected, and the human recipient of these organs has died.

In the early 1990s, a paradigm shift in the approach to organ transplantation took place. Instead of altering the human body’s response to transplanted organs, using drugs to shade the organ from rejection, scientists began to cloak the animal tissue in human protein. These human proteins, markers on the transplanted organ, signal to the human recipient that the organ is not foreign, that it is human, that it can be accepted by the immune system. In the very near future, once this system is perfected, the recipient will be able to return to a normal life, a carrier of organs grown and nurtured in the bodies of animals, farmed not for food or clothing but rather for the body parts that are needed by a dying human being.

‘The Organ Donors’ is a fictional extrapolation of these real life events, a story of near success in scientific research. It is the story of a perverse refinement of species-over-species domination that allows one company to bring to market what humankind so desperately wants: human organs grown in a less than human creature; animals created by man, raised by man and exploited by man for the betterment of mankind….But what animals? And when is an animal not an animal? And when is a human being a human being?

‘The Organ Donors’ takes place in the first years of the twenty-first century, Human organ transplantation has become a common surgical procedure. The paradigm shift in organ transplantation has allowed great advances in the use of animal organs to replace failed human tissue. Hundreds of genetic research firms have sprung up, anxious to make the most of this new industry. But not all transformed animal organs come through with the promise of the new technology. The perfect transplant – one which would be reliably accepted and would allow the recipient to return to a normal life – has eluded all but one company, the ‘International Center for Organ Research’ (I.C.O.R.).

Because of the superiority of its genetically-altered baboon organs, the ‘International Center for Organ Research’, located in the remote southeast corner of Venezuela, now has a world-wide monopoly in the supply of organs for transplantation. America is fast becoming a financial slave to the foreign supplier, its own genetic firms, unable to break the code that would allow home-grown organs to supply the ever increasing demand to save American lives.

Jack Doyle, world-renowned American documentary film-maker has been invited, as the first outsider, to view the South American facility of I.C.O.R. and to ask pointed questions of the firm’s secretive director, Eduardo Ernesto de Cortez. Accompanying Jack is Helen Santos, Ph.D, hired for her expertise in genetics and, unbeknownst to her employer, sent to I.C.O.R. in order to steal an altered baboon embryo, a step that would allow America to discover the secret of I.C.O.R.’s success.

Helen’s goal of accessing I.C.O.R.’s formula is backed by a competing American genetics research firm. Financial servitude to the whims of a foreign company is seen by the American government as a true threat to national security and further backing for Helen’s mission is provided by the country’s Central Intelligence Agency.

Many questions are on Doyle’s mind when he is finally able to visit I.C.O.R.’s Venezuela organ farm. How has I.C.O.R. been able to achieve what other companies have not? Why is the price of I.C.O.R.’s organs so high? Is a technology that relieves so much human suffering – a discovery that is able, not only save a human life but also make that life infinitely better – something that should be given, not sold, to the people who need it?

Jack Doyle leaves Venezuela with most of these questions unanswered. A clue to one question – ‘Why has de Cortez chosen to locate I.C.O.R. in such a remote part of the world?’ – is found when Jack and Helen meet William Sandberg, an aging anthropologist.