Trading Down

Did you hear about the 17-year-old Chinese kid who allegedly sold a kidney to get money to buy one of those Apple Ipad 2 tablets?

The International Business Times reported recently that Xiao Zheng, a high school student living in China’s Anhui province, somehow connected with an organ-buying agent on the Internet who offered him 20,000 yuan – about $3,100 U.S. dollars – for one of his kidneys.
“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” Zheng was quoted as saying.

Apparently, the kid did not consult anyone – including his mother – about selling his kidney and traveled to another province where a clandestine kidney-harvesting operation was set up at a local hospital.

The story said the boy returned home with his super-cool new toy AND an iPhone but soon began experiencing complications from the fly-by-night surgery.

“When he came back, he had a laptop and a new Apple handset,´ said the boy’s mother, who contacted local police in an attempt to track down the organ grabbers.

The hospital where the surgery was performed reportedly had no qualifications for kidney transplantation and denied any knowledge of the operation when confronted by investigators.

The incident seems to highlight two things: One, there is a serious black market for body organs fueled by people who don’t want to or can’t afford to wait to go through official channels. And Two, there are kids out there who will do just about anything to have the latest flashy technological gizmo.

True, the Apple iPad 2 tablet is pretty darned cool. It’s the latest in ultra-thin, mobile computer technology with all the bells and whistles, as we older people might say.

But to sell one of your kidneys and risk a possibly fatal infection or death on the operating table by a shady surgeon is a high price to pay for the device.

I see that the iPad 2 starts at around $500, so maybe the kid had enough left over to start a college fund. Or maybe he’ll have to spend what’s left on his medical complications.

Could the same thing happen in this country? You would like to hope not. But why not? All it would take is a willing buyer and seller and an out-of-the-way place to harvest an organ.

When it’s over, some naive kid might not get any money but be simply left for dead on a bloody operating table.
So is this a cautionary tale or a preview of things to come?

I’m sure others have sold their organs on the black market for some fast cash who didn’t plan to spend it on a spiffy-keen toy that lets you watch movies while lying on the beach.

But it does underscore the ongoing obsession with owning the latest gadget and how important that is to impressionable young people who feel they can’t live without it.

Unfortunately, it might turn out they can’t live WITH it.
I hope someday this Chinese kid doesn’t desperately need a kidney transplant and wishes he still had that back-up kidney he sold for a toy that ended up as one more momentary Big Deal in the dustbin of history.

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