Alternative History
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Consolamentum is a controversial specially designed euthanasia drug researched and developed by the NHDO. It is meant to cause swift, irreversible unconsciousness without influencing physiology, which enables the organs to be harvested from a potentially healthy physical body. Although it rapidly causes irreversible brain damage, it also has a very short half-life and is rapidly metabolised by the liver into a harmless form which is easily excreted via the kidneys, ensuring that no residue remains in the body. It is given by injection-only and can not act if taken per os. In some countries it is also used for capital punishment.

Controversy[]

In the Federated Kingdom, policies regarding the use of consolamentum were controversial on its introduction. It was given as an option to people diagnosed as terminally ill and is sometimes used on people without reliably ensuring they are in a persistent vegetative state after physical injury. It is also the only treatment available on the NHS to people who fall seriously ill on the Social Wage above the age of sixty. Moreover, although none of the nations of the Federated Kingdom allow capital punishment, the NHDO has a globally-enforced monopoly on its manufacturer and is the sole source of the drug, which it sells even to regimes such as Argentina, though it is not used in South Africa because its "borders" are closed (like several other African nations, there are no definite borders to South Africa because of the widespread absence of government elsewhere on that continent).

Consolamentum is, however, popular in the FK and elsewhere because it provides a steady supply of transplant organs, blood products and other medical resources, which do in fact extend the healthy lifespan even of people in receipt of the social wage.

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