Chinese teen sells kidney to buy iPhone and iPad

[thewayne]

Wow. He comes from a poor village, and his parents didn't know until they asked him how he was able to buy the gear. Five people, including the surgeon, have been charge after pocketing the $35,000 that the kidney fetched. And now the kid is suffering from renal insufficiency.

Apparently it was just five years ago that selling organs like this was made illegal.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/five-charged-teen-kidney/

Comments

[silveradept]

That's crazy. And it probably says something about the perversion of Mr. Ford' maxim about creating products that the people who work on them will be able to buy.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I think it's saying a lot about the perversion of the Chinese economy. China is very screwed up, and there's no easy way to fix it. They artificially keep their currency low against the U.S. dollar, because if it floated as it should, it would cause hyperinflation and economic chaos in their country, which the government cannot afford. You've got horrible working conditions in pretty much every manufacturing plant in China, yet people are queuing up to make Apple's iStuff because they're the best paying jobs around.

It's tragic, and the sad thing is that it has the potential to get worse.

[silveradept]

It does, indeed. And it doesn't make great sound bites or pithy remarks, which is what I was going for, I guess.

And the worst part is that this manufacturing job is considered an improvement over subsistence living and farming, which is what the countryside has for their options - subsistence farming and subsistence farming.