1001 Nights Cast

Newman ascended from Martin Place Station and glanced over the glassy surface of the city. A stream of commuters moved up and into office blocks on either side of the granite slope. Women in ironed suits and high heels glided past men chewing breakfasts from paper bags. Newman’s gaze panned over this smooth, functional scene, until something caught his eye.

CONSIDER EYE DONATION. A banner flapped on Sydney Hospital, above the bronze boar fountain. Newman had never signed his driver’s licence to donate his corneas in the event of an accident. He just read a story in The Spectator about a little girl who had regained her sight through a transplant. The plaque on the fountain read, ‘In the Chinese zodiac, the pig symbolises insight and prosperity’. The animal sat in a watery trough, littered with coins. Newman tossed in twenty cents, just to be on the safe side.

A quarter rolled out of the coin return of the coffee machine at the Milton Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. It was retrieved by Dr Anthony Yan, from Sydney Hospital’s Ophthalmology Department. He needed a shot of caffeine before addressing the 3rd International Congress on Xenotransplantation, sponsored by the World Eye Bank Association. Coffee consumed, he began. ‘The number of transplants performed every year is growing, but so too is the waiting list for organs. Biologists are keen to develop a potential new source of organs. Research has concentrated on pigs, because of their similar anatomy to humans…’

Newman flipped through The Spectator. He noticed a gruesome story about a derelict, left for dead, his eyes gouged. He found the article about the girl and dialled the donation enquiries line. A hospital voice asked him to make an appointment.

The conference participants in Denver were riveted on Dr Yan’s presentation. ‘Like human-human transplants, animal-human transplants (or xenotransplants) must overcome the immune system. My research team at Sydney Hospital has genetically engineered pigs to express a full complement of human MHC genes from prospective recipients, guaranteeing a perfect donor-recipient match…’

At his appointment, Newman perused a brochure: ‘Make a difference by signing a pledge card today.’ Newman signed a card and followed a nurse into an adjacent room. After asking him to read some flashcards, a doctor squirted liquid into his left eye. The black and white letters merged into a pink and blue starburst.

Dr Yan felt himself dozing off as the next speaker moved the discussion on to ethics. ‘The future of organ farming is challenged by an ethical dilemma. Animal rights activists have weighed in, arguing that genetically manipulating animals is morally wrong…’

Emerging from anaesthesia, Newman felt a stabbing pain behind his left eyeball and blankness. His left socket was empty. They had removed his eye. There must have been a mistake. The pledge card he had signed was beside him. He read the fine print, which left no doubt that he had agreed to donate an eye whilst still living. There was another card, which read THE HOSPITAL PROVIDES A COUNSELLING SERVICE.

Once recovered, Newman went to the counsellor for an explanation.

‘Who will get my eye? Blind children like that little girl?’

‘Oh, her? Great piece of public relations. Actually, most of our clientele come from among the rich and famous vision-impaired’.

‘Vision-impaired?’

‘Some are technically sight blind, others are colour-blind, short-sighted, or it may be for purely cosmetic reasons. These people pay big money. As elective surgery, it’s an expensive operation. And donor numbers are declining. Hence the advertising blitz’.

‘Can I get another eye?’

‘Certainly. I recommend you start with our website. You can use the terminal in the corner.’

Newman logged on. ‘Welcome to the Sydney Eye Bank. Please fill out the Tissue User Registration Form to view and select from our currently available inventory of transplant tissue’. Newman flipped through the eye catalogue. The cost of an operation ran to six digits.

Newman stepped outside in a daze. In the dank shadows of the Morton Bay fig trees, he was set upon by a rabble of salesmen: deregistered doctors, morally and otherwise bankrupt clinicians, and businessmen eager to cash in on demand from remorseful ex-donors, with offers of third world imports, discounted bogus parts, and tissue from other dubious sources. Newman remembered the derelict in the paper. In the black-market gloom, the bronze boar seemed a monster, squatting on a hoard of deceitfully-gotten gains. The sight of a uniformed patrol sent the traders scuttling. ‘There’s nothing to see here,’ a policeman told Newman.

When he returned to the counsellor, Newman was told, failing other options, pigs’ eyes were a compatible size and colour. He was advised to go early morning to the abattoirs with ice. The hospital would charge only implant costs.

Dr Yan emerged from the main entrance of the Convention Centre and was confronted by a throng of animal liberationists. Brandishing photographs of their martyred mascot, Astrid, the first transgenic pig, and banners protesting, ‘Animal Transplants: Frankenstein Science’, the angry pack closed in. A shot was fired. The surgeon crumpled, blood oozing from a fatal wound to the eye.

Newman exited from the convalescent ward and crossed over to Martin Place. On the down escalator, he stumbled against people, transformed by his new pig eye, into silky sows, trotters slipping on the polished granite, and chimeric pig-men, stuffing their snouts into breakfast on the run.

The area in front of the hospital was cordoned off for an official inauguration. The mayor was unveiling a fountain, erected by the wealthy Yan family in memory of their relative, the recently murdered transplant surgeon. A bronze boar was chosen to celebrate Chinese Year of the Pig.