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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Rumors Of Stolen Kidneys Spreading On Internet Official Calls Message ‘Urban Myth Run Amok’

Philadelphia Inquirer

The Internet message that has circulated through offices around the United States is, according to many authorities, a hoax.

The message tells of business travelers who accept a drink from a stranger and wake up in a hotel tub, packed in ice, with their kidneys stolen.

The “well organized, well funded” crime ring is operating in most major cities, the message claims, and has recently been “very active in New Orleans.”

Those who declare the message a hoax include the New Orleans Police Department, the National Kidney Foundation and an officer of the American Society of Transplant Physicians, a group represented by Slack Inc.

“It’s an urban myth run amok,” said Wendy Brown, chairwoman of the National Kidney Foundation.

“It’s a total hoax,” said J. Harold Helderman, a transplant surgeon and the transplant physicians’ president-elect.

The message that scared some Mobil Corp. employees read, in part:

“The crime begins when a business traveler goes to a lounge for a drink at the end of the workday. A person in the bar walks up as they sit alone and offers to buy them a drink. The last thing the traveler remembers until they wake up in a hotel room bathtub, their body submerged to their neck in ice, is sipping the drink. There is a note taped to the wall instructing them not to move and to call 911. The business traveler is instructed by the 911 operator to very slowly and carefully reach behind them and feel if there is a tube protruding from their lower back. The business traveler finds the tube and answers yes.

“The 911 operator tells them to remain still, having already sent paramedics to help. The operator knows that both of the business traveler’s kidneys have been harvested.”

The message is signed and gives a telephone number and pager number, both in Texas. Callers find that those numbers have been either disconnected or are no longer in service.

Similar dead ends have greeted anyone who has attempted to investigate the Internet message.

The New Orleans Police Department, which had been deluged for several months with queries about the message, found no examples of kidney theft when it investigated.

To buttress their conclusion the message is a hoax, authorities often point to negatives.

“Nobody’s been admitted to a hospital in kidney failure,” said Helderman. “They’d be dead in time because of uremia. There are none of these people.”

Mark Sampson, a spokesman for the United Network of Organ Sharing in Virginia, said there would be no incentive to steal kidneys because hospitals would not use a stolen organ.

But suppose there were bad doctors, and suppose they had their own hospital and had access to the network’s computer files. And suppose there were wealthy people on the list who didn’t want to wait and would pay for a new kidney.

Would kidney theft then be a possibility?

“That’s the multimillion-dollar question,” said Donald Joralemon, a medical anthropologist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

He noted that “people have been paid to deliver their kidneys” despite the illegality of the practice. He said there is a documented case in England.

And in South India, impoverished people have sold their kidneys and eyes, he said.

There are several cases of fears being raised in Third World countries that wealthy foreigners will snatch children from the streets to take their organs, Joralemon said.

In 1994, a panic swept Guatemala where, in one city, a crowd savagely attacked a woman from Alaska on the belief she was stealing children to harvest their organs.

“It’s hard to discount (these fears) entirely, given the tremendous value placed on organs on an international basis,” Joralemon said.

But he added, “I know of no specific instance that has been investigated with absolute certainty, (and) there have been lots of investigative efforts.”