Scientists have been able to keep a liver alive outside a body with a new machine designed to promote successful liver transplants. Somehow, it seems to improve the quality of the organ as well.
The machine mimics the conditions of a natural body, relying on algorithms to make sure all the proper conditions are met without the need for human supervision. It was tested on pig livers first, then on human livers deemed too risky for transplants.
This technology could revolutionize the market for liver transplants by extending the window from 24 hours to a full week. Average wait time for a liver is up to a year.
If the technology works, it could set the stage for a story in which organs are kept in storage for up to a year. Would this much time be enough to allow all people waiting for transplants to receive one? If so, what would happen without a wait list? Would people not have the same aversion to common behaviors which affect the liver, like alcohol consumption? The world could be a bunch of drunks, a wild west of sorts. Out of this world could rise a lone western hero, one who refuses to partake, rises to fame, then becomes the leader of a group of counter-culture individuals, like a reverse Joker.
Elvis didn’t drink, and met Nixon about promoting a sober agenda.
Taking another route, what if all organs could be transplanted after an indefinite amount of time? Or multiple organs? Or bodies? If someone was about to die, could they receive a new body, choosing from a freezer full of potentials?
This could be an interesting series, where the hero of the story explores what it’s like to live his final days, doing whatever his heart desires, unaware of the possibility to receive a new body. Or maybe it's a contest to receive the new body, with only one winner in a death game, and his decision early on forced his participation. In the end its revealed there is an entire bunker full of bodies waiting to be transplanted, and in subsequent books the hero works to unravel 1) a lingering problem the previous owner of the body got his or her self into and 2) the repercussions of being the reason he was forced into the death game in the first place, maybe the revenge of a loved one.
