Chinese Teen Sells his Kidney for an iPad2

The Chinese youth of today have taken to rampant, American-style consumerism like nobody’s business. Case in point: a 17-year-old boy identified only by his last name, Zheng, has admitted to selling his kidney so he could buy an iPad 2 tablet computer, a wildly popular status symbol among China’s young and hip.

According to the Telegraph and China’s Global Times, Zheng, from Huaishan, Anhui Province, responded to an online ad that promised big bucks for organ donors. With a million Chinese needing organ transplants each year but less than 10,000 people actually receiving them, a booming black market in human organs has emerged.

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn’t have the money,” Zheng told Shenzhen TV. “When I surfed the internet I found an ad posted online by agents saying they were able to pay RMB20,000 ($3,086) to buy a kidney.”

Zheng then traveled to Chenzhou, Hunan Province where he had his kidney removed in Chenzhou 198 Hospital, which according to Shenzhen TV is not qualified to perform kidney transplants.

Three days later, Zheng was on his way home with RMB22,000 ($3,396) in his pocket.

It was inevitable that his mother would figure out something was rotten in Denmark. “When he came back, he had a laptop and a new Apple handset,” she told Shenzhen TV. “I wanted to know how he had got so much money and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys.”

Chenzhou 198 Hospital has admitted renting out its urology department to a private businessman, but denied knowing anything about Zheng’s surgery.

Here’s the Shenzhen TV report on the story, but unfortunately, it’s in Mandarin:

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