During the 1990s, the United Kingdom's National Health Service experienced a severe shortage of organ donors. With demand far outweighing supply and refusal rates escalating, public concern and ethical debates about how to increase donation rates became widespread. Government and medical professionals began exploring alternative options, including xenotransplantation, the transplanting of living substances from one species to another, as well as expanding donor registration. This shortage emphasized both the desperation for life-saving transplants and the ethical limits of how far science should go to meet that demand. Although, why incentivize donations when you can manufacture compliance? It’s reasonable for readers to ponder exactly how Kathy's society “solved” the organ shortage, and envision that scenario in reality. A market with no supply? Never Let Me Go gives us a bold solution: grow your own! Creating human clones as involuntary donors seems as real as any slightly-unhinged fiction. Yet, understanding that a place like the UK was grappling profusely with real organ shortages add’s historical, and theoretical, weight to Kazou Ishiguro’s kind-of speculative world. The novel becomes a haunting "what if?" scenario. Because seriously, what if? Nevertheless, acquainting ourselves with this history allows us to dwell in the thought that this novel isn't just fiction, it subtly poses as a quiet warning, a story grounded in real-world fears about the future of medicine, the cost of convenience, and the cost of humanity. 

 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10101926/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1459557/

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1997-05-20/debates/4f5637f2-dac3-4...

"<div class='fn'> Kidney donor cards, England, 1971-1981</div>" is licensed under CC BY 4.0.