So I am presenting the One-Stop-Human-Body-Shop at CODI in August (excited? nervous!). See here if you want to buy a ticket  https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/event/578417-one-stop-body-shop/. Meantime in order to get the gist of the dangerous idea I will be proposing for my OSHBS here is a poem. Its based on my understanding that the last word in most of the sentences needs to rhyme. Yeah. I know. Wont be giving up the day job. Here goes:

 

‘Pigs and machines” v1

 

In a future I can see,

A special way of being human for you and me,

You see the longer we live for, the more we are going to need,

Organs that are broken and diseased, indeed

All of the things in the visceral space we know nothing about

Until we know these parts are things

We simply can’t do without.

 

Prosthetics are supports for the limbs and joint,

But they cannot replace whole organs,

not at this point,

Organ replacement needs human donors,

Donating body parts after brain dead,

Apart that is,

From their head.

 

Pigs – well there’s load of them for a bacon butty

So there is no need to make a fuss

Like a vegetarian,

Using parts of them to replace parts of us.

Indeed, spare heart valves can be porcine

And no one cares whether this is ethically “out of line”,

The next step then is a pig heart – and heh! its all fine.

 

But what is that you say?

You might not feel that great

Using for organ replacement an animal that you ate

It might make you want to oink, and roll in the mud,

Can you imagine the state?

Of identity befuddles with pig-human muddles.

 

Try instead a machine – much cleaner than an animal host,

Really the benefits of IT has so much more to boast,

Turning a person into a cyborg half human and half machine

Would make us all much more keen,

To live a hybrid life in-between

The question of where metal stops and I begin…..

A small detail to be ignored at the cost of a ‘what-might-have-been’.