Yet, like so many urban legends, the organ theft rumor is scary and compelling, and continues to spread from place to place and person to person, adapting to its surroundings like a mutating virus. But unlike many urban legends, this one has put people's lives at risk. A few years ago, rumors spread in Guatemala that Americans were kidnaping children to steal their organs for transplantation. In March and April of 1994, several U.S. citizens and Europeans were attacked by mobs who believed the rumors to be true. An American woman, Jane Weinstock, was severely beaten and remains critically impaired.
Contagion is an apt metaphor here.
Songs, ideas, fashions, commercial slogans, and urban legends are all examples of memes. It's clear from the kidney theft story that a meme need not be true to be fit for survival. One such trait is its ability, like a good ghost story, to evoke a tingle of fear in its hearer. And, on the darker side, there's undeniably a sense of power to be had by provoking fear in others. Some people take a perverse pleasure in it.