Short Takes: “Tales From the Organ Trade”

Test Ticker

MOTHER JONES NEEDS YOUR HELP

Our fiscal year ends today, and we still need upwards of $60,000 in online donations to finish our budget at break-even, or as close as we possibly can. We’ve already cut $1 million in costs. We can't afford to come up short. And there’s more about why this is so urgent here, or in this primer about our nonprofit journalism and finances. Straight up: We can get there, but it's going to take more people who care enough about our journalism to be reading this blurb to pitch in and support it than normal. Please help if you can.

Mother Jones needs your help. Our fiscal year ends today, and we still need $60,000 in online donations to get to break-even, or a lot closer. We’ve already cut $1 million in costs. We can't afford to come up short. Learn more about why this is so urgent in “News Never Pays,” or about our finances and nonprofit operation here, and please support the journalism you get from us if you can right now. We need more help than normal.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Tales From the Organ Trade

HBO DOCUMENTARY FILMS

With “king of venereal horror” David Cronenberg narrating, you’d expect stories of people being drugged and dragged onto filthy operating tables, only to awaken with a kidney missing. Actually, director Ric Esther Bienstock makes a decent argument for the sale of kidneys on a regulated market. The World Health Organization, among others, condemns the very notion as the ultimate in First World exploitation, yet some of the so-called victims tell Bienstock how selling a kidney saved them from a life of poverty. As for the well-heeled ill, the choice may boil down to death versus a less-than-ethical transaction. Which would you choose?

This review originally appeared in our November/December issue of Mother Jones.