14 DAY TRIAL // Prosecutors in Chenzhou, China have arrested five people involved with “intentional injury” for organizing and contributing to the removal and transplant of a kidney from a 17-year-old high-school student craving for Apple devices.
Reported by the official Xinhua News Agency late Friday (via CBS News), the case involves five defendants - a surgeon, a hospital contractor, and brokers who sought donors online and leased an operating table.
He Wei, one of the defendants, had been broke and frustrated over gambling debts, which reportedly prompted him to ask another defendant to look online for organ donors and an operating room. All this went down in April last year, Xinhua reports.
He Wei reportedly received 220,000 yuan ($35,000) for the transplant of a kidney from a 17-year old high-school student surnamed Wang. The student only got $3,500 out of the whole deal, which he later went off to spend on an iPad and an iPhone.
Wang reportedly admitted to having the operation done after his mother asked him where he had procured the Apple devices.
The official Communist Party newspaper Guangming Daily said in an editorial last month: "Without facing complete hardship, these young people born after the 1990s made rash decisions. In the choice between their bodies and materialism, they resolutely chose the latter. In today's society where desires are infinite and demands are boundless ... blindly competing with others in the pursuit of high-end 'technology' will gradually ruin lives.”
Editor's note This is not the first time an Apple fan decides to donate an organ in order to satisfy a longing for the elusive gadgets dreamed up at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California. However, it is just as disturbing each time you read about it in the press.
For anyone even remotely thinking of doing the same, just keep in mind that an iPhone / iPad will not last forever (if common sense doesn’t already tell you that your kidney is far more important to your overall well being).