Burn the Ashes by John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey & Christie Yant

Author:John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey & Christie Yant [Adams, John Joseph & Howey, Hugh & Yant, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1796549525
Amazon: B07ND2TDM2
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press
Published: 2020-06-28T23:00:00+00:00

ADVOCATES of the original Whitfield Laws had been passionate about the need for organ donation reform, the need for easier access to solutions to the ever-growing medical need. They had spoken about dying children, dying parents, and mounting debt among virtually all levels of society, the need to find a way to let people use every resource at their disposal, including the resources of their own bodies.

There had been exceptions, absolutely, there had been exceptions. No matter how much need there was for pediatric organ donation, it would never be legal for a parent to sell a minor’s organs, nor for a minor—even an emancipated one—to sign the paperwork on their own. Age eighteen, that was the minimum for legal compensated living organ donation. If a child died of natural circumstances, of course, their parents could choose to receive payment for their organs, helping them to offset the pain and trauma of such a devastating loss. Assuming the death was ruled natural causes. In cases where any question could be reasonably raised, all donation decisions would be made by the government, and no compensation would be offered. It was the only way, some people said, to keep the wrong kind of parents from raising their children like lambs for the eventual slaughter.

People who had been deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, the very old, and the very young, all were forbidden to donate organs…although again, their caretakers and legal guardians could make those decisions for them, once they were deceased. Some opponents of the original laws, and the refinements which followed after them, pointed out that there was never as much investigation into the possible murder of a disabled citizen as there was into the murder of a child. Those people, by and large, disappeared before they could say anything more.

They had been correct about one thing: the Whitfield Laws had established, quietly and without much of a fuss, the sort of slippery slope that people everywhere liked to claim existed only in hypothetical situations. And once the slide began, it just kept on going.

Karen sat at her kitchen table, looking at the gray metal box in front of her and trying to figure out when, exactly, they had passed the point of no return. She’d read everything she could about the initial passing of the law, the logic and rhetoric behind it, and the colder, less humanitarian rumors that had dogged it from its inception. The ultra-rich, the opinion columnists liked to say, had always resented their inability to pay for a better place in line. The Whitfield Laws, no matter how carefully they couched their goals, would grant that ability to anyone with a large enough line of credit. Need a new heart? Need lungs that worked, retinas that could restore your sight or smooth young skin to do what cosmetic surgery couldn’t? Slap down your credit card and reap the rewards of wealth.

It had taken years for the desperate and hungry to run out of easy choices, of things they could sell without much long-term consequence.

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