I wonder if you were as sickened as I was this week to hear of the Dutch reality program called The Big Donor Show, where three nervous candidates would compete in front of a prime-time audience for one life-saving kidney operation.

The show worked like this: 37 year-old Lisa, a terminally ill cancer patient, agreed to donate a healthy kidney, but wanted to establish a connection with a ‘deserving’ person so her family could feel her death had kept someone else alive. Three candidates would share their story—talking about their lives, their family, their friends, and their dreams for the future. Viewers would advise Lisa of their choice by text message. Then Lisa would choose the winner.

When  first heard about The Big Donor Show I jumped on my computer and wrote an editorial, likening it to the gladiatorial combats of Roman times where we, the TV audience, like the Colosseum crowd, would gather round, chanting and salivating, waiting for the emperor to give the thumbs up or down to those in the ring. I said it would be a grubby, exploitative, immoral TV show that decides the fate of three desperately ill people through a popularity contest.

Then the news broke yesterday that it had all been a hoax! The show went to air but soon it was discovered that Lisa was an actress, and the three kidney transplant patients were in on the whole thing, to raise publicity for the low number kidney donations in Holland. Time magazine, the US media, our ABC—we were all duped!

When I first heard about The Big Donor Show I was disgusted and outraged. Then a thought came to me, which still haunts me. If the show had been true, and had aired here in Australia, would I have watched it? Would my sense of moral outrage have translated into action, or would I have secretly taken a peak to find out who got to live, and who got to die?

There’s something in us humans that is attracted to scandal; something in us that likes to stand at a distance and watch what we shouldn’t. Someone yells ‘fight!’ in a schoolyard and a crowd flocks to watch. We sit glued to shows like Jerry Springer, watching angry ex’s publicly expose their partner’s affairs. We listen to talkback shock jocks demean and humiliate callers they don’t like. Even something as ‘innocuous’ as a gossip session provides cheap and easy titillation at someone else’s expense.

There’s something in us that wants what is wrong. If The Big Donor Show had been real, I hope I would’ve maintained moral integrity and not watched it. Of course, in the end that would’ve meant I missed the surprise! Here lies the quandary—the producers of The Big Donor Show cleverly gained the publicity they wanted for a very serious issue. But their tactics may have actually alienated the conscientious viewers who may have actually gone and done something about kidney donations.