"O" Type Kidney For Sale

FTLComm - Tisdale - Sunday, August 12, 2001

Below is the actual e-mail message that I received this morning:

Date: 8/12/01 4:32 AM Received: 8/12/01 2:35 AM From: timothy@ftlcomm.com Reply-To: jimsdad@bigfoot.net To: timothy@ftlcomm.com If you need or know of someone who needs a KIDNEY, please contact me. I am offering a very healthy (Blood Type "O") KIDNEY by silent auction. Bidding will close on August 31, 2001. Make your offer by Email. Every bidder will be notified weekly of latest bid. Jim

When I read that message I had to take a moment and consider this and slowing and horrifyingly the details begin to sink in. To be available at a specific date means this is not a kidney donated by an individual who is on life support and it has been agreed by the family to pull the plug. No this is someone who will have a healthy kidney removed from their body and sold at auction. We still live under the same wonderful and ever changing sky, but have we lost something of our humanity by such an offer and what kind of world is it where such things could take place? Let us all resolve to preserve what little of civilisation remains.