Back when e-commerce was new, some Girl Scout troops decided to get a jump on their neighbors by offering their wares online.

The national organization successfully snuffed out this form of e-commerce. Check out Google on any keyword relating to the cookies (which go on sale soon in your neighborhood and mine) and you won't find any outlets.

The Girl Scouts got away with this restraint of trade because, frankly, it wasn't fair for the non-savvy girls to see money flowing only to those whose parents knew the online ropes. Money raised from sales is shared, after all, between the national organization, the local troop, and its community organization.

What does this have to do with kidneys? Plenty.

The United Network for Organ Sharing and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons have rules similar to the Girl Scouts, and for similar reasons. They don't want people buying-and-selling organs, and they don't want to take a single step down the slippery slope leading to that.

Such as advertising your need for an organ, as Alex Crionas did. An MSNBC story on the case gave short-shrift to the dangers, featuring instead a big picture of Crionas and the man who agreed, through Crionas' Web site, to donate one of his organs.

At the end of the MSNBC story, it's casually thrown out that Crionas has transferred his records to another organization "that has no problems with" how he got the kidney he needed. No mention of the organization's name, or how they came to this conclusion. No real discussion of the issue, in fact.

And thus, with a picture and a little editing, journalism pushes us down yet-another slippery slope....all the way to the bottom.