Dirty Pretty Things 2002 - Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day TV - Ferdi Pacheco - Homer William Smith - Jonah Lomu - Red Dwarf TV - Jon Ronson TV - culthelponline - CNN online -
He had his kidney removed in the hotel, yes? Dirty Pretty Things 2002 starring Chiwetel Ejiofor & Audrey Tautou & Sergi Lopez & Sophie Okonedo & Benedict Wong & Damon Younger & Paul Bhattacharjee & Darrell D'Silva et al, director Stephen Frears, Okwe
Guy’s Hospital: Ann: Bringing her to hospital three times a week for life-saving dialysis ... One of nine people in Britain to receive a new kidney today. Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day II, BBC 2013
Ali got lazy. And Ali was letting him [Tim Witherspoon, sparing partner] punch and toughen his side. But you don’t toughen up kidneys. Kidneys don’t believe in toughening up because they are a delicate, delicate organ. That was one of the big reasons that Ali fell apart. Dr Ferdie Pacheco, Ali’s fight doctor, re fight with Larry Holmes 1980
Superficially, it might be said that the function of the kidneys is to make urine; but in a more considered view one can say that the kidneys make the stuff of philosophy itself. Homer William Smith, The Evolution of the Kidney, 1943
The responsibility for maintaining the composition of the blood in respect to other constituents devolves largely upon the kidneys. It is no exaggeration to say that the composition of the blood is determined not by what the mouth ingests but by what the kidneys keep; they are the master chemists of our internal environment, which, so to speak, they synthesize in reverse. When, among other duties, they excrete the ashes of our body fires, or remove from the blood the infinite variety of foreign substances which are constantly being absorbed from our indiscriminate gastrointestinal tracts, these excretory operations are incidental to the major task of keeping our internal environment in an ideal, balanced state. Our glands, our muscles, our bones, our tendons, even our brains, are called upon to do only one kind of physiological work, while our kidneys are called upon to perform an innumerable variety of operations. Bones can break, muscles can atrophy, glands can loaf, even the brain can go to sleep, without immediately endangering our survival, but when the kidneys fail to manufacture the proper kind of blood neither bone, muscle, gland nor brain can carry on. ibid.
There are those who say that the human kidney was created to keep the blood pure, or more precisely, to keep our internal environment in an ideal balanced state. This I must deny. I grant that the human kidney is a marvelous organ, but I cannot grant that it was purposefully designed to excrete urine or to regulate the composition of the blood or to subserve the physiological welfare of Homo sapiens in any sense. Rather I contend that the human kidney manufactures the kind of urine that it does, and it maintains the blood in the composition which that fluid has, because this kidney has a certain functional architecture; and it owes that architecture not to design or foresight or to any plan, but to the fact that the earth is an unstable sphere with a fragile crust, to the geologic revolutions that for six hundred million years have raised and lowered continents and seas, to the predacious enemies, and heat and cold, and storms and droughts; to the unending succession of vicissitudes that have driven the mutant vertebrates from sea into fresh water, into desiccated swamps, out upon the dry land, from one habitation to another, perpetually in search of the free and independent life, perpetually failing, for one reason or another, to find it. ibid.
It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment – by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant. Jonah Lomu
You have a problem with your kidneys, sir … You don’t have any. Red Dwarf s11e3: Give and Take, Kryten, BBC 2016
This seemed like it was going to be a sweet story about Christians saving lives but along the way it became a chaos of accusations and anger … Jon Ronson, Kidneys for Jesus, Channel 4 2003
Could these Jesus Christians really put people under their spell? ibid.
Almost all of them have decided to donate their kidneys to strangers. ibid.
Led by Dave and Cherry Mckay a movement mostly based in Australia but with significant global outreach. This movement derives its guiding ethos from a very particular reading of The Bible that prioritises the teachings of Jesus as an apocalyptic figure. Geraldine Smith, The Millennialists Project, 2017
This seemed like it was going to be a sweet story about Christians saving lives but along the way it became a chaos of accusations and anger … Jon Ronson, Kidneys for Jesus, Channel 4 2003
Could these Jesus Christians really put people under their spell? ibid.
Almost all of them have decided to donate their kidneys to strangers. ibid.
Founded in Australia in 1982 by David McKay, a native of Rochester, New York, and his wife Cherry, the Jesus Christians have attracted criticism since their inception …
In media reports the Jesus Christians have often been identified as an offshoot of the Children of God, a claim McKay disputes …
Only thirty members strong, the Jesus Christians live in nomadic communities of five to ten people spread out between Australia, England, Kenya and, until recently, Los Angeles. Culthelp online article
BALTIMORE, Maryland (CNN) – Barry Mendez gave one of his kidneys to a stranger – a good-natured act that has stirred concern among medical ethicists.
It is not unusual for doctors to get organs from corpses or from people who know the recipient. In 2005, for example, about 6,900 transplants involved living donors, nearly all of whom were relatives or friends of the recipient.
By contrast, Mendez is one of only about 400 people nationwide who are known to have ever donated to a stranger.
Mendez is a member of the Jesus Christians, a group that calls itself a ‘live-by-faith, work-for-God-not-money Christian community’. There are 28 Jesus Christians worldwide and 15 have given kidneys.
In Australia, where the group was founded, the government for the state of Victoria is suspicious of the Jesus Christians and has banned its members from donating to strangers.
The Australian press has alleged that leader David McKay has coerced members into donating. McKay says the Jesus Christians are not a cult and he has never coerced any of them into donating a kidney.
Mendez said he gave his kidney willingly.
‘I have done something to help someone,’ Mendez told CNN after his surgery last year at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. ‘And that is the message of love basically, from my understanding, what Jesus was trying to teach us.’
Many European countries ban so-called good Samaritan donors or make it difficult for them to donate. As a result, some like the Jesus Christians come to the United States. CNN online article 5 June 2006, ‘Would you give your kidney to a stranger?’