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Selena Gomez hits back at TV joke about her health

Selena Gomez has responded angrily to a joke made about her kidney transplant on the drama series The Good Fight.

Fans brought a scene in the fourth episode of the most recent season of the legal drama to her attention via social media.

In it, characters discuss cancel culture and "joke permits," with one noting that they wrote a joke about the star's 2017 kidney transplant.

"I am not sure how writing jokes about organ transplants for television shows has become a thing but sadly it has apparently," the Lose You to Love Me hitmaker tweeted furiously in response. "I hope in the next writer's room when one of these tasteless jokes are presented it's called out immediately and doesn't make it on air."

She continued, "My fans always have my back. LOVE YOU. If you are able to please sign up to be an organ donor," and added a link to the organ donation sign-up page on the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration website.

The former Disney Channel star made headlines in 2017 when she announced she lives with lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease that attacks internal organs. In the announcement, she revealed she received a kidney donation from her friend Francia Raisa.

However, a source close to the show told The Hollywood Reporter that they believed the gag was not off limits.

"If you watch the episode in full, the reference to Gomez is part of a discussion the characters are having about topics that are not okay to make fun of and the idea of cancel culture and being cancelled for telling a bad joke," they explained. "The reference is that her transplant is not something you can joke about."

A Saved By The Bell reboot received similar criticism last year after making jokes at Gomez's expense. The controversy resulted in NBC removing the episode and issuing an apology.

Network chiefs then donated money to The Selena Gomez Fund for Lupus Research at the University of Southern California, a charity started by the singer to research treatments for the autoimmune disease.