MCLC: teenager sold kidney to buy iPhone

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: teenager sold kidney to buy iPhone
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Source: The Guardian (4/6/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/06/chinese-teenager-sold-kidney-ip
hone

Chinese teenager sold kidney to buy iPhone
Five people charged after 17-year-old boy from one of China's poorest
provinces sold organ to buy coveted Apple gizmos
By Reuters in Beijing

Five people in southern China have been charged with intentional injury in
the case of a Chinese teenager who sold a kidney so he could buy an iPhone
and an iPad.

The five, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency, included a
surgeon who removed a kidney from the 17-year-old boy in April last year.
The boy, identified only by his surname Wang, now suffers from renal
deficiency, Xinhua quoted prosecutors in Chenzhou city, Hunan province, as
saying.

According to Xinhua, one of the defendants received about 220,000 yuan
(about £22,000) to arrange the transplant. He paid Wang 22,000 yuan and
split the rest with the surgeon, the three other defendants and other
medical staff.

The report did not say who received and paid for the kidney.

The teenager was from Anhui, one of China's poorest provinces, where
locals frequently migrate to find work and a better life elsewhere. He
bought an iPhone and iPad, and when asked by his mother where he got the
money, admitted selling a kidney.
Apple products are hugely popular in China but are priced beyond the reach
of many Chinese: iPhones start at 3,988 yuan and iPads at 2,988 yuan.

Only a fraction of the people who need organ transplants in China are able
to get them, leading to "transplant tourism" where patients travel
overseas for such operations, and to a black market for human organs.

China banned the trading of human organs in 2007. Several other suspects
involved in the case are still being investigated.