Main image via Mirror + International Business Times
What’s the most you’re willing to do to get your hands on the latest phone or gadget?
Some spend months saving up every cent they can, others trade in their old phones, and one guy decided to take things to the extreme and he’s now bedridden for life because of it.
via GIPHY
In 2011, news of a teenager who decided to sell a kidney on the black market to get himself the latest iPhone, made its way around.
The teenager’s, whose family lived in one of China’s poorest provinces’, decision to trade a vital organ for a phone has now left him bedridden for life after suffering renal deficiency.
Wang Shangkun was 17-years-old when he wanted to buy an iPad 2 but he didn’t have enough money to afford it. While in an online chatroom one day, he received a message from an organ harvester who told him he could get 20,000 yuan (RM12,506) for selling a kidney.
He decided to go through with the transaction.
via GIPHY
Yes, we know. This sounds exactly like something our parents would warn us about. And for good reason.
After agreeing to sell the vital organ, Shangkun recalled that he underwent illegal surgery in the central Hunan province to have his right kidney removed by two doctors - who were also employed at local hospitals, and delivered to an unknown recipient.
At the time, the teenager asked himself “Why do I need a second kidney? One is enough.”
Once he went through with the sale, he used the money to buy an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4.
“When my son came home he had a laptop computer and an Apple phone,” his mother told BBC News. “I asked him where all the mone for that came from. When he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer he finally told us.”
“He said, ‘Mum, I sold my kidney.’ When he told me I felt like the sky was crashing down on our family.”
Image via Mirror
Nine people who were involved in the operation were arrested after details of the trade emerged, and five have since been charged with intentional injury and organ trading.
According to NPR, those charged included the surgeon, the broker, the person who leased the operating room and those who were tasked with finding donors on the internet.
Shangkun later developed an infection in his remaining kidney, which is thought to have been caused by the unsanitary location of the surgery and the lack of post-operative care.
As such, the teenager – now in his mid-twenties, suffered renal deficiency and his condition was so severe that he was left bedridden. He now has to undergo daily dialysis to clear his blood of the toxins that his remaining kidney can no longer handle.
Image via Fox News
Please remember that no phone or gadget is worth your health.
If you really want a new phone, please be patient and save as much as you can to buy one and don’t go down the same path as Shangkun who will forever regret his decision.
Share this with someone who has always joked about doing the same thing that Shangkun did!
Info via UNILAD