However, a 17-year-old teen in China doesn't want to carry around a mockup iPad 2, or a Toshiba HandyBook, and due to peer pressure, he sold one of his two kidneys for a real iPad 2 (and probably another laptop, or iPhone 4).
The kid from Anhui province in eastern China headed north for his adventure to seek RMB 22,000 (about $3,000) in exchange for one of his kidney, a deal offered by an online advertisement, all these without the consent of his parents.
"I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn't have the money," the boy told Shenzhen TV in the southern province of Guangdong, "When I surfed the internet, I found an advert posted online by an agent saying they were able to pay RMB20,000 to buy a kidney."
After striking a deal with the company, the boy secretly headed north to the city of Chenzhou in Hunan Province. There the kidney was removed at a local hospital on April 28 which required an additional 3-day stay due to complications stemming from the surgery. He then returned home with one less body part but a shiny new iPad 2 (or iPhone 4) and a laptop.
Naturally his mother grew suspicious when she saw the new toys. "I wanted to know how he had got so much money and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys," she told the TV station while revealing the boy's new scar (seen above).
She took the boy back to Chenzhou and reported the crime to the local police. The hospital, Chenzhou 198 Hospital in Hunan Province admitted to contracting out its urology department to a private businessman in Fujian, but denied that it performed surgery on the teen, because the hospital does not have doctors with qualifications for kidney transplantation. To make matters worse, law enforcement has been unable to get in contact with the three agents the boy contacted through the online advertisement.
Unfortunately, given that the story just broke out, additional details surrounding the investigation have yet to be disclosed. Still, would you sell your own organ for a tablet and a laptop? This is an extreme example of the rampant materialism of modern China, and well, I think may be happening all over the place as we speak actually.
The buying and selling of organs is a growing issue in China and the government has so far failed to stamp out the practice. There have been many reports of “transplant tourists” who come from rich countries to buy much-needed organs from poor, desperate people. The blackmarket trade is driven by the fact that there are many times more people waiting for organs than there are legitimate.
source: 2DayBlog.com
