The Column

The Monkey and the Organ Finder

Whilst on a recent trip to deepest, darkest South Wales, I was holed-up for the night in a motel of sorts. Always one to embrace local culture, I decided to watch the regional evening news show (from the comfort of my bed) to broaden my knowledge of the area, fully expecting the usual uneasy mixture of minor crime reports and light-hearted banter. For the most part this was the case, however one news item stood out like a Gary Glitter record at a children’s disco, prompting me to hastily scribble myself a note to research it at a later date.

Monkey and organ grinder

The item in question concerns Gillian McCarthy, 53, a former nutritional biochemist who has spent the last 11 years living in a wooden hut in a field near Wincanton, Somerset. Gillian claims to be allergic to the 21st century, and is involved in an ongoing battle regarding said hut (named The Stop Gap) with the local council, who have raised an order to have it bulldozed. The council have proposed moving Gillian to a new mobile home, located in a nearby orchard, via airlift, however she has declined this move for health reasons.

Gillian suffers from MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity), which basically means she is allergic to pretty much everything from furniture to aftershave, and hence has been unable to function in the outside world since 1991. In simple terms, MCS is a turbo-charged version of hayfever, causing the sufferer to experience a wide range of symptoms, ranging from sneezing to muscular pain, and is considered an idiopathic condition, since its cause and mechanisms are not fully understood. As a result of Gillian’s condition, she (and her fellow sufferers) cannot be in contact with others, making diagnosing and researching the illness extremely difficult.

Mogadishu

Conditions of such scientific uncertainty can often cause widespread cynicism amongst the public, in fact my own initial response to Gillian’s story was one of annoyance, naturally presuming she was an over-educated freeloader, trying to bleed money from the local council for her own private eco-house. However, after reading up on the case, I found myself feeling quite sorry for her. She is basically living like a caged monkey in a shanty-town, in fact her dwellings would not look out of place on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The hut has no running water or electricity, and if indeed a real monkey did happen to be living there, the RSPCA would have kicked the door down years ago.

Gillian’s case is quite the opposite of that of Cheryl Johnson, 37, from Preston, Lancashire, who was fortunate enough to receive a new kidney which not only cured her medical problems, but also transformed her personality in the process. Cheryl believes she has adopted new characteristics directly from the kidney donor, a 59-year-old man who died from an aneurysm. Her tastes changed drastically after the operation, ditching celebrity autobiographies in favour of books by Fyodor Dostoevsky or Jane Austen, and swapping soap operas for documentaries on Egyptology.

Cheryl’s is not the first such case in which a recipient claims to have inherited characteristics from their donor, in fact academics in America have developed a theory to explain it, called Cellular Memory Phenomenon. At present though, there is only one case recognised by the scientific community, that of a 15-year-old Australian girl whose blood-type changed following a liver transplant, and the general feeling amongst organ transplant academics is one of scepticism. The main problem is that the evidence is not definitive in any sense, and indeed the condition may be entirely psychosomatic.

The concept of Cellular Memory Phenomenon does present some very interesting possibilities, not least for black market organ peddlers, who could begin supplying custom packages such as The Cycling Poet – type AB kidney, good tissue-strength, avid reader of Wordsworth, Keats and Blake, enjoys cycling, walking and fresh fruit. Interest would also develop from more legitimate business operations, for example major football clubs could purchase the organs of lifelong-fans as they pass away, and then sell them at the club shop to anyone who wants to increase their love of the team. Or popular breweries could acquire the organs of renowned Irish drinkers as they pass away and sell them to customers wishing to increase their thirst for alcohol, giving new meaning to the term ‘best liver’.

Tom Jones

Cases such as those of Gillian and Cheryl emphasise both how far we have progressed in terms of scientific understanding, and more importantly, how much work is still to be done if we are to ever fully comprehend the complexities of the human body. The very possibility that memories may exist outside of the brain is both frightening and exciting in equal measure. On the one hand, losing a finger might also result in the loss of one’s fondness for the music of Tom Jones, and yet the ability to identify and copy personal memories from the human body onto a computer would allow one to accurately re-live events from the past. Total recall at the touch of a button.