Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Boy Sells Kidney For iPad2
aquabat writes "According to Shanghai Daily, a boy from the Anhui Province desperately wanted to buy Apple's flagship tablet but didn't have enough cash. Rather than waiting to save up the money for the Apple product when it invariably gets marked down, the lad decided to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan (roughly $3,400) so he could afford one. But, surprisingly, the scenario in which the organ was harvested wasn't in the best of conditions, and the boy isn't feeling very well."
He got exactly what he wanted.
nn
If you're stupid enough to want that, you deserve no more.
Sorry, but it really is just that. And isn't it supposed to read 'unsurprisingly'?
Is he going to sell the other one when the iPad3 is released?
What will he do when ipad 3 comes out?
I always thought ipads were offal
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
That is all.
Wonder if he'll qualify for a Darwin Award?
Hey, maybe when the next version comes out he'll sell the other kidney!
There's an Apple advert here every single day now.
Also people sacrificing themselves to the pyre of materialism, but that's how the world economy keeps running.
People do pay 'big' cash for kidneys, I believe that there was even talk of legalizing the trade in places. It's not hard to see why some people would be willing to sell their own 'extra' organs for what they might see as a princely sum. Many people die from just such circumstances every year, it's a sad reality. The fact that one of the things he bought was an iPad2 is only a detail showing that his 'needs' were purely superficial and enough to get picked up as a story by Slashdot.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
The boy has probably saved another person life. Hopefully these operations were not too botched and everyone will get to live.
According to TFA, the hospital where his kidney was removed was in fact a military one: "PLA 198 hospital", which, when questioned by the police, claimed no knowledge on the broker who arranged the deal, since the whole department was "contracted to a businessman".
Wow, if he gave Steve Jobs his pancreas his family could've gotten some shares of Apple, an iPad 2 and more Mac shit than he could shake a chopstick at. It'd save Steve the embarassment of buying his way ahead in line for another transplant.
Take that Google!! lol
For 3g service, i recommend to sell your cornea
He will be in bad shape by the time the iPad13 comes out.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
That 3G data plan will cost an arm and leg
...they just need to start a more official trade-a-kidney program. That way they can trade an iPad for a kidney and then turn around and sell the kidney to someone who needs it! They'll just need to do better than Sony, who tried this once in the '90s but after only shipping empty boxes to the first few thousand people decided it was easier to just call it "donating" a kidney. You can buy Sony-brand kidneys over in Japan, you know.
gone for the Wii
God is good all the time! -K
Take a kidney to exchange a "apple"? That's crazy!
Do he want to kill himself for a "apple"? Oh,he won't,he just want a ipad.
I wonder how the recipient of the kidney is feeling now?
It's the pain and suffering that makes it awesome.
And then we have the OLPC program giving away what is just about the same hardware as an ipad....
I'm not sure... But knowing these two things kinda makes me sad to be human.
but I hope he got a free copy of iAlysis
Heard Steve Jobs needed one.. here is one for him..
It's horrible he made so great a sacrifice, so lightly. $3000 is a paltry amount for such a thing.. Man, either donate it, or get actually a decent amount for it such as $100k or so.
On the bright side... someone actually needs that kidney, and good will probably come out of this.
Maybe that's what the boy was thinking anyways... donate and help someone... get a little reward.
Trading body parts meant to last your entire life for toys that will last a few years and then be outdated, doesn't seem like a good plan. What's next... his left hand? Big toe? How 'bout some bones.
If he has kidney problems later than life, he will regret this. He might find himself on the buying side, then, I suppose, assuming he can hold out long enough.
Prostitution worked for me.
I don't think you understand. When you pay people to have sex with you, you aren't the prostitute.
This is just a sign of the time - Chinese are the ones producing the damned things, and they are the ones having to sell their kidneys to own one. I am really wondering how much more will it take their people, before they rise against their government and stop their government from printing their own currency into oblivion, just so the foreigners can enjoy fruits of Chinese labor so cheaply, while the Chinese standard of living is stagnating, because their own money does not buy the products, they themselves create.
They are the manufacturer of the world, they are paying for the inflation of the world with more production and they immediately feel the inflation (expansion of money) as rising prices, so last year they had 15-25% price increases for food. How much more of this will they allow their government to perpetrate upon them? They need to cut it, call it a day and stop subsidizing Dollars and Euros, etc., and let their own people enjoy their own work in their own appreciating currency.
You can't handle the truth.
... Apple products normally cost an arm and a leg.
As someone who has a kidney disease, this is good to know. I wish more healthy people were willing to do this out of charity and compassion. But I don't begrudge someone doing it for money/iPad/whatever.
I'm not throwing stones. I have no idea if I'd be willing to donate a kidney if I had healthy ones.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Besides the centipad will get a free upgrade to ipad3, whereas he won't...
Hey now he can use his new IPad2 to track his dialysis appointments.
I got here through a series of tubes
I guess he preferred iPad over iPeed.
-dvikram
There's an App for that!
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I don't think that "Ahh! My eyes! I'll give you $100 to put your pants back on!" counts as prostitution...
That's fine, what could possibly go wrong? Now, if they'd given him one for free, oh the horror.
You are very right about this. But consider that the Chinese government has been telling its citizens to acquire gold for several years now, and they've done as they were told. It's in preparation, I believe, for decoupling the yuan from the dollar. I am shocked few people are aware of this, because when that happens, the pent-up domestic demand in China will have a chance to be met, and a large middle class will emerge there in a few year (much like the USA after WWII). In the US, the dollar will become worthless, and we will regress economically about 5 decades' worth.
He sold his kidney for $3500 bucks. One of the things he bought was an iPad. But that's not a great headline I guess, and it doesn't fan the flames of Apple obsession. "I gotta buy an iPad - people give kidneys for these things!". whatever.
He is just a kid trained and conditioned to "need" things like iPads from birth.
Then he was persuaded to sell his kidney. I really wonder why did they pay him instead of leaving him unconscious in the bed.
All those who say he is stupid and deserves it, should think twice, because that's exactly what that broker must have thought about him. You are perfect candidates for the job (duties: trick not educated people, kids and people not smart enough into selling their organs. They are stupid, they deserve it).
Returned to work at Foxconn making iPads the next day.
Sorry, but I would have to give a kidney to own one too, I am obiously not going to but that doesnt change the situation. So I ask why should I care about the chineese having real money when working class slobs like I are in the same perdictiment
. . . for his liver? Just figuratively asking.
Steve already bought all the livers he will ever need.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
But my question was not directed at you, reread my comment. My question was a rhetorical one, directed at the people of China - What gives, people of China? Why do you want to give up you kidneys to own stupid iPads, when you are the ones manufacturing them? All you have to do is send a real message to your government (or better yet, take it down), so that the Chinese currency is no longer manufactured and US/EU inflation is no longer pushed into Asia.
As for you, you should be asking exactly the same thing of your government, as the reason that China is manufacturing everything today, is that your government is destroying your currency, while not allowing business to restart in the US due to business regulations and taxes. You should be asking your government: WTF? Why are you destroying incentives of businesses to even exist in the country, never mind hiring people here?
You can't handle the truth.
This fixes itself. If Apple fanbois want to sell their organs for each new Apple device, that's fine with me. (In China they probably would have harvested his kidney anyway.)
Our world is full of surprises, it's good to know that there are good and honest black market organs dealer out there that would not take advantage of someone in need for cash. I can sleep easy at night knowing that if i need cash i can always turn to a black market organs dealer and trust that he/she/they would only removed what I'm willing to sell rather than murder me and sell all of my organs.
Look lame in comparison.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
A sad statement on our world-wide materialistic culture.
The kid was so brainwashed to believe that above all else he must own some shiny toy, to the point where he would let some complete stranger carve bits of his guts out to get the money to pay for the toy. He's no better than a street junkie looking for a fix, the fix might last longer than a few hours but the shiny gadget's appeal will wear thin in a year or so when another new shiny gadget comes along.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
did the kidney go to a party member?
This isn't a south park script that got leaked? Seriously this is the kind of crap Kenny would do.
He could have bought a Nigerian baby for $192 (see: http://www.nodeju.com/nigerian-police-closes-baby-factory/9840/ ), sold the baby's kidney for $3400, bought an iPad and have come out of it with a profit!
While life is valuable here in western countries (consider what Americans spend in the final year of their lives for a few more months of breathing), elsewhere, and depending upon where you are, life can be bought for as little as a few hundred.
That life transported elsewhere can then be bought and sold for profit, depending upon local laws. It's a weird world we live in, but I'm surprised no one in China has yet thought about selling organs from cheaply produced Nigerian babies.
As population rises, and an increasing number of people get older, I predict a huge underground market for body parts, and since China is swimming with people, and in Nigeria, life is cheap. There's potential here....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
China makes some great Android tablets wonder why he didn't just spend under $100 on one of those? Screw Apple!
Did anyone else immediately think of "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance"? That is a seriously disturbing movie.
Prostitution worked for me.
I don't think you understand. When you pay people to have sex with you, you aren't the prostitute.
I don't think you understand. The original statement was 'I would have whored myself' this implies recieving the money.
I don't think you understand. You're posting on Slashdot. By default, even as the prostitute, you would have to pay someone to have sex with you.
Oh yeah... Woosh! :)
He could trade his remaining kidney for a coffin and a plot in a cemetery. The joke of course, is that the preferred method of disposal in China has move onto cremation.
His mother called the blue ones when she saw all his tech stuff: she thought he'd stolen it.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
I have to blame his parents, but it takes a village to raise a child.
In this case, I see the village as the whole world which is dominated by advertising/marketing messages.
Many of us feel immune or dulled to the messages of advertisers. But children are especially vulnerable to it. This is why so much is being marketed to younger people rather than to older people -- younger people are more receptive to advertising. (Among older people, the question of necessity is more often asked as is the question of worth or value.)
So, with all the hype and marketing push for these "things" (ipads, nike shoes, you name it) we end up seeing tragedies such as people trampled, attacked or even killed while waiting in line to buy "things." There have been cases where children/youths kill each other for their shoes! The tragedies of this sort are endless.
This is NOT an Apple phenomenon.
Businesses aren't manufacturing anything in the US partly because of regulation but also because it makes no sense to do so any longer. The cost of manufacturing stuff in China is so low that it makes more sense to make it there and ship it - even at outrageous shipping costs - than it does to make it in the US.
I recently had some stuff made in China and shipped here. The shipping cost was 25% of the cost of the finished products, but the total cost was about 50% of the cost of doing the same thing in the US. So why wouldn't anyone go this route?
The real problem is that there is no hope of any trade balance with China because the government actively blocks imports from the West. It is incredibly difficult to sell anything to China and currency transfer regulations are just the beginning of the problem. The US is completely barred from any sort of tariffs on imported goods and services (outsourcing) when China is free to impose regulations that block foreign goods. This means the US will always be owing China with no possible recourse. Somehow, this doesn't seem fair, just or right.
I'd say the only way to go would be to make goods from China simply unavailable in the West. There doesn't seem to be any way to do that without an open declaration of war however. That would be messy. One way to get this done with relatively clean hands would be for the US to repudiate the debt with China - just tell them to go pound sand and that we're not paying. The response from China would have to be (1) blockade of any future trade and (2) declaration of war, probably with a nuclear exchange. Messy, but at least it would be "their fault for starting it." But the result would be no more trade with China and a forced repatriation of manufacturing in the US and probably EU.
If the parents are incompentent to raise a child, I guess it takes a village to step in and take over. Otherwise, the Hillaryism is just silly - you end up with a child with the values of a mob (the village) rather than the values of a person. Mobs are good for some things, but ethics and morality get left behind.
Nobody is going to start a nuclear war over treasury bills. While the people that run China might end up living in slightly less opulence after a trade war, they're far better off than they would be living in a parking lot. Those guys have something to lose.
China doesn't really have the ability to strike at the US conventionally, and the US doesn't need to bomb the Chinese (they're already ahead if they cancel the debt). I'm sure there might be some skirmishes in far-away lands, and a bunch of people will die on both sides. I doubt either country would be seriously affected from actual battle.
However, I don't really think the US has dug itself into quite the hole that people make it out to be. The Chinese gave us a ton of tangible goods, and we gave them a bunch of IOUs. The only real problem from the US standpoint is that we've gotten used to this arrangement. However, if it ever ends we'll just have to make our own goods, and it isn't like we don't know how to do that. The transition could get messy, but for people whose main value is in their ability to work and not their bank accounts it probably won't be a bad deal.
..For an iPad today!
she gives you the capacity to live, without any more or less than what you need
if our distant ancestors were all carrying around some massively overengineered amount of blood filtration capacity, the mutants amongst them with a much smaller capacity would do better reproductively with lower biological overhead in terms of needs. and therefore that much smaller amount of capacity would become the new normal. mutants with below capacity would suffer premature death and lower vigor and vitality and suffer reproductively for that
in other words: no, i'm sorry. whatever mother nature has given us is the right amount, and half that amount is half the amount needed for quality of life. i don't think you are being dishonest, i just don't think you have all the data before you, simply because there is too much obvious weight as to the opinion of what mother nature says is the right amount of kidney capacity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If the lad had stolen in iPad 2, it might have cost far more than just a kidney if he had gone to jail. He might have ended up with both kidneys harvested and most other major organs.
But really, this kid got what he deserves. This kind of stuff goes on in China all the damn time. On the upside, the kid didn't have his organs harvested when he was in a labor camp. He at least got paid a bit of money, and has something to show for it. The only reason this made any kind of Western headlines is because he wanted an Apple widget. If organ harvesting was feasable back when America was up & coming, you can bet the same crap would have gone on. Instead? We just snatched people of different color from their homelands, and forced them to work for barely enough to eat. This kind of stuff will hopefully fall by the wayside more as more people in China see more stories like this. Which sadly, due to the media cencorship in China will make things rather difficult. They have little exposure about this kind of stuff that it's incredibly stupid to do, and they need more stories about this kind of thing so others are less inclined to make such stupid mistakes.
Simple kind of scenario when you were growing up. Did you learn that something was dangerous when your parents told you it was a bad idea, or did you learn when you watched Timmy or Sally down the street do that exact thing, and get injured? One gets hurt, the whole neighborhood learns a valuable lesson.
There's an app for it ! ;-)
Did it ever occur to anyone that he might be mentally ill and/or developmentally disabled? Jesus, he'd almost have to be. Last I checked, a proper and just society protected people from this sort of thing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The upgrade to an iPad 3 is going to be a killer.
Did you read the part about where it was a kid? Kids do stupid things - all kids - unless they are raised in a glass bubble. So yeah, try to have some compassion for children who do things that seem stupid to adults. Geez.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
"Dialysis? There's an app for that."
Said "kid" was 17. I'm all for letting kids make mistakes to learn from them, but this is Darwin Award level dumb.
The only real problem from the US standpoint is that we've gotten used to this arrangement.
- no, that's not the real problem.
The real problem is that there is no capital investment in USA, it moved to China and other places, and this means that for USA to be able to restart manufacturing, it either will have to rebuild all the tools it will need by hand, if the trade is fully blocked, or it will have to sell a lot of energy and other mined resources to Chinese and others, in order to get the tools, machines, finished products necessary to restart manufacturing and production.
However there is another problem - over the last couple of generations, USA was losing not only savings and manufacturing base, but also knowledge and trade skills necessary to run production facilities. This also will have to be rebuilt or re-bought, repatriated somehow, things don't just appear out of thing air without capital and knowledge.
You can't handle the truth.
The main 3 reasons for any business not to stay in USA are:
1. Inflation by government printing.
2. Income/corporate/payroll taxes, as well as the mess of medical taxes.
3. Business regulations.
The cost of labor is really on a distant fourth if it even enters the real equation, the real problem is always the government, and if government is not involved, the cost of labor will adjust to the market conditions, so it's really not that important.
Business regulations kill far more potential jobs in US than cost of labor, and taxes kill the most jobs.
As to Chinese and their tariffs - they have high tariffs, but those tariffs are applied to raw materials and energy. Who, from the West is importing to China? Well, Germany is, and China has a trade DEFICIT with Germany, not a surplus, as it has with USA, so clearly, if Germany can have a trade surplus with China, importing various tools and machines, etc., then it cannot be used as an excuse by US that it cannot deal with China on equal footing.
No no, it's not about tariffs from the Chinese - that's a misconception brought to you by the same government, that tells you that the way government measures CPI is a true indicator of inflation and that the official employment numbers are real and that GDP is an indicator of real economic growth - it's all nonsense.
The reason China has a trade surplus with USA, and USA has a 50 billion USD/month deficit with China, is the same reason USA has a large deficit even with Canada - and you can't say that Canadians are actively preventing USA from doing business, USA is Canada's main partner, they wouldn't dare.
The reason USA has this problem is because US government has declared a war on US economy and US dollar by growing the government to over 10% of the working force, by growing government expenses and obligations without any ability and plan to pay any of it out, because all of their plans are based on ridiculous assumptions about the economy, all of those assumptions are wrong. The reason is the insane income/corporate/payroll taxes, the involvement of US government in economy in terms of subsidies to large monopolies, destruction of competition in the market, destruction of currency by printing, destruction of real credit rating of the USA (not the garbage they tell you on TV - real credit worthiness of US private sector is in real trouble), destruction of the labor force through all the labor laws, that make US labor totally unattractive for any sane businessman.
I would not hire a US worker, the regulations, taxes, punishment for hiring them are outrageous, so I can't imagine why anybody sane would either.
As to China having all those IOUs in their Treasury - they'll shake it off, they'll be fine, they have the real wealth - production capacity, they have real economy - product oriented economy, which makes stuff. They'll shake it off, let their currency rise, and that will be the end of this age of US running on foreign credit and foreign manufacturing subsidy.
You can't handle the truth.
True, but a trade war will start slowly over time too. If the Chinese float their currency their prices will steadily rise, making it less cost-effective to outsource there. Either work will shift to some other country, or back to the US. I doubt the Chinese will just wake up one day and declare a blockade or something, and the US isn't about to just do something like default on its debt without some kind of warning.
Steve Jobs gets a liver by selling them
But he lived, so he's not a winner I guess
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Either work will shift to some other country, or back to the US.
- why would it go back to the place, where the market conditions are nearly the worst in the world for investment capital and business regulations and labor market, it's really not going to return. It will have to be rebuilt domestically, with new businesses, willing to start from scratch basically, which is going to be insanely difficult, as the interest rates for US based businesses to get real investment and to be able to buy real machines and tools and talent will be very high, I expect high double digits crossing into triple digits interest rates - very few can manage to get that kind of a loan, because the requirements for collateral will be just insane and mostly impossible to satisfy.
No no, as Chinese let their currency rise and US defaults on all of its debt, the Chinese currency will skyrocket, and more and more investment capital will come to China from all over the world, this will be the validation of the capitalist principles at work, ironically it will be done by a so called Communist state, so that's unfortunate. USA gives capitalism a bad name and China gives Communism a good one, it's all insanely creepy in terms of the outcome of what people will believe.
However the productivity in China will be higher and higher, as market will see more of the Chinese consumers being able to afford all of those products and services they couldn't afford before, so for at least a few decades, they'll have growing market. Where it will go from there? I don't know, but it's not going just to disappear into nothingness, and at some point people really should take a note, that socialist agenda fails the economies and free market is the way to go.
You can't handle the truth.
What does it matter that they're the ones producing them? Boeing employees can't afford their product that they produce, either.
It doesn't take a village; the village just can't keep their noses out of everyone's business, so instead we are forced to let the village help.
but Apple said they couldn't give it to him, so he ended up selling an organ to someone else to get one.
Before anyone starts spouting off about how we shouldn't apply "Western" values to Asia, I'd like to point out that whoever wielded the knife here was in screaming violation of Chinese medical ethical standards:
The Chinese Counterpart to the Hippocratic Oath
"A Great Physician should not pay attention to status, wealth or age; neither should he question whether the particular person is attractive or unattractive, whether he is an enemy or friend, whether he is a Chinese or a foreigner, or finally, whether he is uneducated or educated. He should meet everyone on equal grounds. He should always act as if he were thinking of his close relatives. [2]"
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I'm really hoping this is a viciously satirical post, but I'm falling victim to Poe's Law.
If you're aping Jonathan Swift, congratulations, you got me.
If you're not, and you're actually as old as your user id would seem to indicate, then might I suggest that in your Last Will and Testament you request that they put an all-steel fireproof shovel into your coffin with you before they put you in the ground?
It'll make things easier when you get to Hell and they tell you to start digging.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
You mean that for the first time in several decades, a single income will be enough for a family of 4 to make ends meet?
Put it another way, but yes, sort of. There aren't going to be enough jobs for two people to find worthwhile work. It will make economic sense to have someone stay home and do the domestic work, and maybe have a part-time crappy job. And there will be one car. And maybe one TV, and maybe not such great cell phones and blu-ray players, and when things break they won't get replaced, they'll get fixed. There's a lot more to why many families of four have two incomes than just living expenses. We've become an unsustainably consumption-oriented culture, and we're going to regress to a period when we were more production and/or savings oriented.
although, he should have gotten much more money for it. if we can sell plasma, semen and eggs, why stop there? if someone is willing to pay, they should be able to get what you have. plus, it'd be hard to be against this but for any other free markets.
...
organ markets shouldn't be black markets in the first place. they should be completely legit and regulated.
...
Well, if you are going to compare it that way, then compare the actual USE of the product - government inflation means that the loss of the purchasing power will not allow the Boeing employees to book flights on those planes, never mind buying them outright.
You can't handle the truth.
There's an organ for that...
"Hey kid... Give you an iPad for that kidney."
I would like to suggest that a reason be given for rejecting a story submitted to slashdot. Giving a reason can preserve good will which will encourage regular users to help with moderation and keep submitting stories.
I submitted this story and it was rejected without a reason. That wasn't the first time, so I usually do not bother to respond to requests from slashdot to pitch in work.
Seeing that my submission was likely a duplicate I feel better. Hence my suggestion.
This might not have happened if the Chinese government put less resources into oppressing its citizens and more resources into law enforcement for shutting organ harvesting down.
Now THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is an Apple Fanboi... all the rest are officially posers.
Stone
It comes already pickled.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
I guess I could say that generations before your parents people were married (or cohabiting), having children and building their own houses before 17. I guess that reflects badly on your parents' generation.
Or I could say that all those people getting married, having kids and a mortgage all by 17 sure weren't going to college or university. I guess that education and learning wasn't very important to them. I suppose that reflects badly on their generation too.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I read this story....on my iPad
Organs don't really have a long shelf life. Unless they already have compatible recipients lined up it may not be worth the trouble of covering up your murder.