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It sounds too easy to be true: forward an e-mail, rack up some cancer research money. And it is. Too easy to be true, that is. This dying child chain letter hoax now circulating on the net victimizes the American Cancer Society. In the name of a fictitious little girl, people are exhorted to forward the letter on because each forward drops more money into the research coffers. Such an offer is hard to resist because it's a painless good deed, a way to enjoy a self-congratulatory pat on the back for making a difference without actually having to do anything. After all, it's being underwritten by the American Cancer Society and nameless corporate sponsors, right? Uh, wrong. You see, there is no Jessica Mydek, and there is no such program to score up some easy cancer research money. What there is, however, is the long-suffering American Cancer Society who have been left holding the bag. But let's take a look at what's actually being bounced around the net, eh? That was the original version. Since January 1997, this 3 cent e-mail hoax has undergone numerous major transformations: By November 1997 the Tamara Martin e-mail had returned, this time with the ante upped to 6 cents per forward but copies still directed to . By January 1998, copies of this new 6 cent e-mail were being directed to . Some of the numerous versions in circulation contain an exhortation from Dr. Dennis Shields of the Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Like many others in the history of Internet lore, his name mysteriously came to be attached to a hoax. As he said about it: Thank God the American Cancer Society doesn't have an America Online address, else by now they'd be swamped with copies of forwarded messages from well-meaning but terribly misguided people. (As is becoming the norm for large organizations, the ACS has its own domain name: www.cancer.org). Even so, the various ACS offices around the country have been hit with calls asking about this most touching e-mail, and manpower that could be put to much better use ended up staffing phones and answering e-mail. (It's ironic, that. The families of real dying seven-year-olds end up getting the short end of the stick because of this outpouring of love for a fictitious child.) The ACS position is quite simple: they do not endorse the use of chain letters. Ever. They've also told me that this particular use of the Society's name is unauthorized. Also, they don't know any Jessica Mydek. Indeed, they're doing their level best to investigate where this wild e-mail came from. It certainly wasn't from them. (Check out what they have to say about it at the ACS web site.) Above and beyond the information obtained from my conversations with the ACS, common sense alone should show this up for the hoax it is. Think about it for a second. One of the primary purposes of the American Cancer Society is the direction of funds to cancer research. (The ACS is good at this: since its inception in the 1950s, it has directed $1.7 billion to the cause.) The concept of the ACS donating funds towards cancer research is akin to the notion of a hockey player donating all the goals he scores to his team. Then there is the matter of unnamed corporate sponsors; there just ain't any such critters. Companies donate monies to worthy causes, and their reward for doing so is becoming identified in the public's mind not only with that particular cause but also with the larger concepts of service to one's community and a sense of social responsibility. These are powerful images to plant in the minds of consumers, far too powerful to just be thrown away by remaining anonymous. It all adds up to hoax. Even the child's name provides a further clue: As has been pointed out by a few people, Jessica Mydek is nearly homophonous with a rudely-phrased request for oral sex (think about it), and the mentality that would create this chain letter would also get sniggering pleasure out of the thought of concealed dirty words being unknowingly e-mailed all over the globe by well-intentioned people. Likely as not the perpetrator of the original hoax had no idea of the havoc his creation could wreak. Perhaps he gave in to the urge that prompts some of us to reach for the spray paint upon sighting a prominent and ever-so-grafittable rockface. Urge for immortality and all that. Not immortality for a dying seven-year-old, you understand — immortality for the prankster. So please, if you get it, don't forward it. You're giving the wrong person immortality.
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