Asia-Pacific News

Chinese schoolboy sells kidney to buy iPad, iPhone

Apr 7, 2012, 10:30 GMT

Beijing - A 17-year-old Chinese schoolboy bought an iPad and an iPhone after selling one of his kidneys for 3,500 dollars to a gang organizing illegal transplants, state media reported Saturday.

Police arrested five people suspected of illegal organ trading after the teenager, identified only by the surname Wang, told his mother how he had paid for his new electronic goods, China Daily newspaper reported.

Wang received 22,000 yuan (3,490 dollars) for his kidney from the main suspect, He Wei, who sold the kidney for 10 times that price to a transplant patient in the central province of Hunan in April last year.

Wang had responded to an online request for people to sell their kidneys and travelled from his home in nearby Anhui province for a removal operation performed by a hospital surgeon, the newspaper said.

Wang later developed problems with the functioning of his remaining kidney, it reported.

Prosecutors in Hunan's Chenzhou city have charged He, the surgeon and three other suspects with causing intentional injury to Wang.

Police were investigating several other suspects involved in the illegal sale and transplant of Wang's kidney.

The Health Ministry said recently that about 10,000 transplant operations take place annually in China, but an estimated 1.5 million people need transplants.

Most transplant organs come from executed prisoners, but Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu said last month that the government planned to end that practice within five years.

The dearth of transplant organs has fuelled a black market, prompting the government to ban all trading of human organs in 2007 and to revise criminal law to allow tough punishments for organ traffickers.