Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Organ transplantation in fiction

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Esquivalience ^t 02:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Organ transplantation in fiction[edit]

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Indiscriminate list; the prose ends up being original research and synthesis. Entirely unreferenced. Mikeblas (talk) 00:53, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk 02:02, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Yes, it's unsourced, but there is plenty of scope for improvement. There are plenty of other examples that could be included, e.g. Spock's Brain, Percy, Crank: High Voltage - it's a fairly common theme and there are undoubtedly sources out there. Indiscriminate? Original research? Synthesis? I don't see any of those. --Michig (talk) 06:36, 4 April 2015 (UTC)If[reply]
Keep The topic is notable. See Transplant Medicine and Narrative, for example. Andrew D. (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I think categories that don't have main articles tend to just be stub generators, so I support keeping the article but of course we should work on improving it and getting it referenced. Bryce Carmony (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I was pleasantly surprised to find prose, not the too-common bullet list of "every video game/comic book/cartoon/movie instance that ever mentioned an organ transplant" listcruft. The Transplant Medicine and Narrative source above is the type that of secondary sources that these types of articles must be built-upon to structure and hold back the tidal wave of primary-source trivia like Spock's Brain. In short, primary sources (works of fiction) should be only be mentioned if one or more secondary sources discuss the significance of it, otherwise we'll get a list of "oh neat, so what?" If multiple similar sources to Transplant Medicine and Narrative can be found then I hope The Anome and other editors voting to keep are willing to aid in sourcing and (re)structuring, to better keep any original synthesis or essay-ish tones at bay. To wit, unsourced terms like "generally", and "(in a less overtly horrific manner)" imply the editor is imparting his/her own assessment, which even if eventually found true, constitutes original composition. --Animalparty-- (talk) 21:13, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - original research. Something of a mashup of different ideas, too. Andyjsmith (talk) 23:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and improve -- I wouldn't have created this article if I did not think the topic, and its content, met the notability criteria: it clearly needs citations to demonstrate this, but I think these can be found relatively easily. Just for starters, Donna McCormack at the University of Leeds has published on this topic, for example in her 2002 paper "Intimate Borders: The Ethics of Human Organ Transplantation in Contemporary Film", and Linda Badley's Film, Horror and the Body Fantastic (Greenwood Press, 1995) also has a chapter on the theme. Yesheen Yang's dissertation Organ Ensembles: Medicalization, Modernity, and Horror in the 19th and 20th Century Narratives of the Body and its Parts, while not of itself a RS or available onlne, may also be a source for good RS cites. And thanks to Andrew for finding Transplant Medicine and Narrative, see above, and its reference to the 1927 story "New Stomachs for Old" of which I was previously unaware. I'm sure many more reliable sources, and further information to expand the article, can be found with more digging. I also think that the body horror article could use similar improvement, and there's probably a place for a standalone medical horror article. -- The Anome (talk) 14:30, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Update: this might also be useful -- "Dr Frankenstein and the Industrial Body: Reflections on 'Spare Part' Surgery." Cecil Helman, Anthropology Today Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jun., 1988), pp. 14-16. -- The Anome (talk) 16:30, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.