Organlegging

This article is about a science fiction concept. For its real-life equivalent, see Organ theft.

Organlegging is the name of a fictional crime in the Known Space universe created by Larry Niven. It is the illicit trade of black market human organs for transplant. The term organlegging is a portmanteau combining the words "organ" and "bootlegging", literally the piracy and smuggling of organs.^[1]

The crime developed as a response to the Organ Bank Problem, a concept featured prominently in the early Known Space stories, particularly those set in the 21st and 22nd century. The Organ Bank Problem is a central theme in the novel A Gift from Earth, as well as the Gil Hamilton detective stories. As speculative fiction, the concept is a prime example of a gedanken experiment. It is an examination of the consequences to society of a new technology (in this case, the perfection of organ transplants) and an existing problem (organ shortage), carried to a logical conclusion.

The effect of technology on society is a recurring theme in Niven's stories.

The organ bank problem

In Niven's universe, it was possible to transplant nearly any organ in the body (and prevent rejection) by the mid 21st century. Since any organ could now be replaced, in theory one could use the organ banks to extend life indefinitely. To maintain communal organ banks, one needs donors (i.e. dead people). When the death rate is reduced (via the organ banks), the number of donors decreases. Thus, the supply of organs would continually reduce.

Compounding this problem, the high success rate of organ transplants tended to discourage research into other viable medical treatments. As a result, medical research was stagnated to a large extent, focusing primarily on improving transplants and little else. Repairing a failing organ (which could presumably fail again later) was considered secondary to the "complete" solution of replacing the failing organ.

An example in the Known Space universe was that anyone who wore eyeglasses was considered a reasonable candidate for an eye transplant (one or both); whereas in the real world, today's nearsighted population can solve the problem (temporarily) by wearing corrective lenses or (more permanently) by undergoing laser surgery.

Attempts by governments to solve the problem

On Earth, the problem led to a repressive society almost unrecognizable by today's standards. Since the average citizens wished to extend their lives, the world government sought to increase the supply by using condemned criminals to supply the organ banks. When this failed to meet the demand, citizens would vote for the death penalty for more and more trivial crimes. First violent crimes, then theft, tax evasion, false advertising, and even traffic violations became punishable by the organ banks. This failed to solve the problem, as once the death penalty was passed for a crime, people stopped committing it. This resulted in nearly every crime meriting the death penalty. Further attempts to alleviate the problem by declaring certain groups of cryogenically frozen people to be dead in law (the so-called "Freezer Bills") and harvesting their organs also proved to be unsuccessful. The freezer vaults represented a finite supply and therefore were eventually exhausted.

The Belters took a different approach. They viewed survival as a virtue in and of itself, and were reluctant to turn otherwise healthy people into transplant stock. They preferred prosthetics to transplants wherever practical. Their solution to the problem was to keep transplant prices as high as the market would allow, thus dropping demand to meet the supply.

Colony worlds each took their own approaches. A notable example was the human colony of Plateau. Society was divided into a rigid caste system, with descendants of the Colony ship "Crew" holding absolute power over the descendants of the ship's passengers, or "Colonists". The Crew controlled the planet's entire industrial infrastructure, including all access to organs and transplants. Successive colonist resistance movements provided much of the material for the organ banks, crew were unlikely to be sentenced there. They in effect controlled both supply and demand by their absolute rule.

Organlegging gangs

The crime of organlegging involves several aspects: abduction of unsupecting persons, the harvesting of their organs, and finding customers to purchase the organs once they were acquired. Thus a successful organlegging gang required three groups of people, one to handle each aspect of the operation.

The first group (the "snatch men") usually consisted of young, tough, uneducated males, with just enough intelligence to capture a prospect, and get him or her to the harvesting facility alive without getting caught.

The second group were the "doctors", the ones who harvested the organs and kept them ready for transport to a customer at a moments notice. This was usually the safest aspect of the operation as the harvesting facility could be hidden in a remote location, and the doctors had little or no public contact.

The third group (usually referred to as "organleggers" proper) were the ones who found potential customers, and delivered the organs to them. They were salespeople and field surgeons at the same time. The advent of automated precision surgical equipment allowed them to transplant the organs on the spot and required minimal training to operate. This was by far the most dangerous aspect of the operation. Some customers would attempt to turn in the organleggers in a fit of conscience after receiving their transplant. At least one pair of organleggers were killed by a customer attempting to cover his tracks for another crime. For this reason, they changed their identities, faces, and other physical characteristics frequently—a simple process given that they can use their own stockpiles for cosmetic grafts.

End of organlegging in the Known Space universe

The only way to end the organlegging problem was to reduce the demand for human organs. Given the desire of humans to extend their lives, the only way to reduce the demand was to find a substitute for transplant stock. However, the draconian anti-technology laws of the ARM hindered all developments. It was not until the mid-24th century that alloplasty, improved prosthetics, and most importantly, the ability to grow the needed organs by manipulating one's own DNA, ultimately made the organ banks obsolete.

It is later revealed that this process was helped along significantly by the covert influence of former Belter turned Protector: Jack Brennan.

In other fiction

The concept of organlegging has expanded beyond the Known Space settings. The fantasy/cyberpunk setting Shadowrun involves organlegger gangs, going not only organic organs, but cyberware too. Many in this universe are operated or supported by ghouls, who help in the cleanup.

The Term Organ-legging is used multiple times by author Tanya Huff in her book Blood Debt.

The 1990 novel by Anne McCaffrey, Pegasus in Flight has a similar concept, organ farms, where the organs of street children are removed for the use of the rich.

See also

• Known Space
• Flatlander
• Gil Hamilton
• The ARM
• A Gift From Earth
• Organ theft
• Coma
• Repo Men
• Parts: The Clonus Horror
• The Island
• Science fiction genres and related topics
• List of science fiction themes

References

1. ^ Hazel Pierce (1983), A Literary Symbiosis, Greenwood Press, p. 120, ISBN 9780313230653, http://books.google.com/?id=CptZAAAAMAAJ