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Pastimes : MortgageYourOrgan.com -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carromill who wrote (1)	6/10/1999 10:17:00 PM
From: SteveJerseyShore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8

Just do today as they did in days of yore. How do you think those sweet, young boys were able to sing in the chior with their angelic falsetto voices into their late teens? In order to sing so late in life, they had to relinquish their little peanuts at a tender,young age.The local stable hands would take a large looking rubber band type of instrument and wrap it as tight as possible around the top of the male-pillowcase, thus insuring the bloodflow to stop,and the balls to wither on the vine,die,and drop off.The same way it is done to horses and many dogs even today.(Things were so much simpiler back in the good old days,don't you think?) SjS

To: carromill who wrote (1)	9/3/1999 9:19:00 AM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Respond to of 8

it doesn't nearly have the same ring as "mortgage your organ," natch ... but methinks "auction your organ" could be a viable competitor too. and this from the mcpaper (i.e., usa today) ... "We get items we have to take down on a fairly frequent basis," eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said. "From time to time, we'll get a kidney or a liver." fava beans extra? ----- Illegal Kidney Auction on Ebay New York Times September 3, 1999 By AMY HARMON Bidding for a human kidney, described on the Internet auction site Ebay as "fully functional," began at $25,000 and reached $5,750,100 before the company abruptly ended the auction Thursday afternoon. In the pantheon of bizarre items that Internet users offer for sale on Ebay -- host to about 2.6 million auctions a day -- human organs are forbidden. To buy or sell them is a felony under Federal law, and trading in illegal goods is a violation of Ebay's rules. Chances are the auction was a joke. But whether or not the offer was real, the incident underscores the ease with which the Internet enables transactions of any kind, regardless of social custom or law. "A market is just a buyer and a seller and the thing they're transacting, and the Internet allows anyone to meet up with anyone," said Kevin Werbach, managing editor of the technology industry newsletter Release 1.0. "If you could get something through a normal channel and there was sufficient supply, you probably wouldn't go to Ebay." Steve Westly, Ebay's vice president for marketing and business development, said yesterday that the company was working with law-enforcement officials to insure that no illegal transactions occurred. "Ebay has zero tolerance for illegal items on the site," Mr. Westly said. "We do not know whether this was a prank or real, but what people should know is we treat this very seriously." Earlier this year, after users had posted auctions for a missile, a rocket launcher and other military weapons, whose sale among civilians is generally illegal, Ebay, based in San Jose, Calif., banned the sale of guns and ammunition on the site. The company has no automatic screening mechanism for items that it deems unacceptable, relying on users and its customer service staff to flag violations. The kidney seller, identified as "hchero" of Sunrise, Fla., put a $25,000 floor on the bidding when he made his offer, on Thursday of last week. "You can choose either kidney," he wrote in his description. "Buyer pays all transplant and medical costs. Of course only one for sale, as I need the other one to live. Serious bids only." The National Organ Transplant Act, enacted in 1984, makes the sale or purchase of human organs punishable by up to five years in prison or a $50,000 fine. And while the Internet can bring together invisible buyers and sellers in the ether, the actual transplant of an organ requires a real-world hospital and corporeal surgeons. So bioethicists were not very concerned yesterday. "You can't do an organ transplant on the sly," said Henry Greely, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in bioethics. "You need a host of professional intermediaries before this could happen." Still, if such a sale took place through an Internet site not based in the United States, it might raise jurisdictional questions, Professor Greely added.