Today a Chinese teen is in the news... 17-year-old "Zheng" (that's his sur name) confessed to his mother that he had sold one of his kidneys for about $3,100 (American dollars) so that he could afford to buy an iPad2.
"I wanted to buy an iPad2, but I didn't have the money," the boy told TV reporters, "When I surfed the internet I found an advert posted online by agent saying they were able to pay RMB20,000 to buy a kidney." There was some negotiating and then on April 28th Zheng left his home where he lives with his mother and traveled north to the city of Chenzhou in the Hunan Province.
Doctors at a local hospital removed his kidney and discharged him after 3 days.
When he returned back home he had a laptop, a new iPad2 and a new Apple headset... his mother demanded to know where he had gotten so much money, I mean for a Chinese family this is a small fortune, and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys and showed her the bright pink scar.
Of Course his mom freaked the freak out. She took him back to Chenzhou to report the crime to the police, but as you might expect... all three phone numbers that Zheng had been using to contact the people to whom he had sold the kidney to were disconnected. The hospital says they know nothing about it, and that they had contracted that operating room out to a private individual.
Apple products are in huge demand in China, and are seen as a major status symbol by young consumers.
In poor foreign countries people sell their organs... In the Philippians one doctor pays £1,000 per kidney and has no shortage of donors.
In American one man, who had lost everything and was close to being homeless tried to sell his kidney on Craigslist for $75,000, and this other guy offered to sell his kidney for 2 tickets to Obama's inauguration. There is no shortage of idiots willing to part with a vital organ in exchange for money or other seemingly unobtainable things.
The sad thing about Zheng is that he's just a kid. He had no idea what he was getting into. His surgery didn't go well, and he's been suffering from complications. He now seriously regrets his decision.
Now that he has his new computer and iPad2 he gets constant online offers for free iPads. How's that for a slap in the face... or kidney, as it were.
Maybe Apple can come up with an iPad app that processes toxins and waste from your blood. Until that happens, it's probably not worth it to be selling a kidney for electronics that are going to out of date in a year.
What would it take for you to sell a kidney?
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