August 9, 2016

How Much Are Internet Kidneys Going For These Days?

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From my inbox this morning, here is the entire message:

Please I want to sell one of my kidney o+

I don’t think I need a kidney at the moment, but maybe later. And anyway, I need one in A-negative. If you’re going to spam me with this stuff, the least you can do is have the decency to hack into my medical records and offer me one of the right blood type. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

So is this the latest internet scam? Or has it been going on for a while and I only found out about it today? How does it work? Maybe if I reply, I’ll then get a long sob story about why this poor guy needs to sell his kidney and I’ll be so heartbroken I’ll PayPal him $10,000 to put his life back together. That’s the best I can figure out. Anyone have a better idea?

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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