Chinese teen sells kidney to buy iPhone, iPad
Authorities have indicted five people in central China for involvement in illegal organ trading after a teenager sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPhone and an iPad.
The case has prompted an outpouring of concern that not enough is being done to guard against the negative impact of increasing consumerism in Chinese society, particularly among young people who have grown up with more creature comforts than generations before them.
The suspects in the city of Chenzhou are accused of organizing the removal and transplant of a kidney from a 17-year-old high-school student surnamed Wang, the official Xinhua news agency said late Friday.
A woman on duty Saturday at the Chenzhou Beihu District People’s Procuratorate in Hunan province confirmed prosecutors are handling the case and that the defendants are facing charges of intentional injury.
She refused to give her name and referred further questions to the city-level procuratorate’s media office, where phone calls rang unanswered.
The defendants include a surgeon, a hospital contractor and brokers who looked for donors online and leased an operating room to conduct the procedure, Xinhua said.
It said about 1.5 million people in China need organ transplants while only about 10,000 are performed each year, fueling the illegal trade in organs.
Xinhua described one of the defendants named He Wei as being broke and frustrated over gambling debts. It said he asked another defendant to look for organ donors in online chat rooms and someone else to lease an operating room for the transplant, which took place in April last year.
He received $35,000 for the transplant, gave the student $3,500 and shared the remaining money with the other defendants and several medical staff involved in the operation, Xinhua said.
When the student returned home, he was asked how he could afford a new iPhone and an iPad, and he told his mother he sold one of his kidneys, the report said.
The Southern Daily newspaper reported last month that other individuals have sold kidneys, or seriously considered doing so, to earn money for reasons that included paying off large debts, making a payment on a smartphone, or paying for an abortion for a girlfriend.
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