MovieChat Forums > Never Let Me Go (2010) Discussion > this doesn't make sense

this doesn't make sense

posted 12 years ago by student_points
6 replies | jump to latest

Every donor is 'modeled' after an original, right? So i am assuming they donate their organs only to their originals ? (make sense right?)
So the question is : WHEN are these donors born/made?

The first scenario would be, if these clones/donors would be born/made at the same time the original is born. That way if anything happened there will be spare parts. But most donors apparently die/complete after their 3th donation. In Ruth's case and also in Tommy's case, and apparently many more, these donors die at a very young age, let's say they are 26 years old. How come the originals need 3 transplantation of vital organs at that very young age???? What horrible disease does everybody have that they would need 3 transplantions by the time they are 26??
Wouldn't it be more normal if people needed spare parts when they are old and their body is worn out? So the donors would be much older if they died/completed.

Second scenario is that these clones are made years after the originals were born, when they are young adults for example. So that the clones are grown up by the time old age would hit the originals, and they started to need donors.
But if they are made years after, what if an original would all of a sudden, need a unexpected transplantion at a very young age, and the donors are not yet born??

See, either way it doesn't work

or is there answer given in the book?

Or are

[–] greg-233 12 years ago

Nothing in the book indicates the donors give their organs to the people they were modelled on. The organs just go to anyone who needs them.

I imagined that "originals" simply give over some of their cells (maybe in a blood sample or a skin cutting) to the medical people who then implant these into surrogate mothers to grow batches of clones. The whole process would be anonymous, the originals would never get to meet their clone(s).

"Wouldn't it be more normal if people needed spare parts when they are old and their body is worn out? So the donors would be much older if they died/completed."

At the start of the film it was said by 1967 life expectancy had increased to 100 years. If a person's body is getting old, worn out or diseased, it seems to make sense that they would get healthy organs from a young clone to add a few decades to their own life. Why would the clone have to be older?

[–] student_points 12 years ago

Why would the clone have to be older?

This was in the assumption that receivers only get organs from donors who are modeled after them and would be the same age as them.

Ah so if the organs go to just anyone than it makes more sense.

[–] victoria-ruscica 12 years ago

The organs are for any ailing person who is in need of a vital organ.
Also I think the idea that they were modled after "trash" comes from the idea that DNA samples were given in exchange for money much like blood or sperm is in some places

[–] Little_Tyke 9 years ago

Nothing about this movie made sense. Once, that is, the teacher, who was subsequently sacked for spilling the beans, had revealed the awful truth. If people are routinely living to 100 years old by 1967, the government would need far more than ONE Hailsham. And word would get around. The delivery men obviously had some kind of clue about what was afoot, but would everyone keep stumm like the Germans during the war who insisted later they never knew about the death camps?

There would have been millions of 100-year-olds alive and therefore millions of donors needed so that they could extend life expectancy by another ten years, and then another ten, and so on. The whole "plot" was so shot full of holes, it rapidly resembled a colander. Minor detail: Who is going to fund all the food, shelter and health care to keep the donors alive for twenty+ years till they start "donating"?

Besides, any community, including the one at Hailsham, would inevitably produce rejects, though none of these surfaced during the movie. What happened to them? Why didn't the sacked teacher create a protest movement, as she was against the whole idea?

In the words of Larson: Just. Plain. Nuts.

[–] greg-233 9 years ago

"If people are routinely living to 100 years old by 1967, the government would need far more than ONE Hailsham."

There was more than one Hailsham. Or rather, there were "homes" that reared the clones. Hailsham wasn't the only place where clones grew up.

Hailsham was special, because it set out to show that the clones could be just as human as ordinary people. The school was funded by philanthropists. The novel mentioned a similar school called Glenmorgan House. Like Hailsham, it closed down as well. So now there are only the "battery farm" homes again.

[–] tbradydvm 9 years ago

What we know about the "originals" is just what the kids have made up through stories told back and forth amongst themselves. We only know what Kathy knows and Kathy only knows what people have seen fit to tell her.

My theory is that these "clones" are probably not direct clones of original free-living people but clones of lab-engineered specimens with the correct combination of genes to make them appropriate for donation (they're probably all O negative and have naturally docile temperaments and are free of genetic diseases and defects. The human version of lab mice). It seems unlikely that they would just take samples from a bunch of people and clone them directly unless each donor was for a specific person, which doesn't fit this story. If they just took a bunch of convicts or random donations there'd be too much chance of spending money raising kids with unpopular blood types or defects that made them unsuable. This system seems too big and expensive to accept that margin of error.

Most likely the people who provided the original genetic material are long dead but the characters in this movie would only bear slight resemblance to them anyway.