ABSTRACT
In 2005, an email began circulating with a subject line reading “Human parts processing factory in Russia.” The email included a number of very graphic photos that appeared to depict dozens of naked corpses piled on the floor and on tables in a filthy room; other photos showed men wearing bloody aprons hacking the bodies apart. The email warned that this body processing factory in Russia was harvesting organs from unclaimed bodies, and selling them to universities and pharmacies. While the email and the images within it are a hoax – in order to be medically viable, the harvesting of organs must be done in a sterile environment and must be taken from the very recently dead or the brain dead – its believability points to the widespread social concerns surrounding organ donation.
