Chinese 'kidney for iPad' trial starts

Nine people have gone on trial in the central province of Hunan, China, accused of illegal organ trading and intentional injury after a 17-year old high school student sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad and iPhone. The teenager, identified in a report by the state-run China Daily as Wang Shangkun from the Anhui province, was allegedly recruited through a chat room by one of the defendants, and paid 22,000 Yuan ($3,456) for the organ, which was removed in an illegal transplant operation by a team from a local hospital. The kidney was sold by the gang behind the trade to an unknown buyer for 150,000 Yuan ($23,566) and a further $10,000 in cash, netting them a profit of around $30,000.

While to Westerners $3,458 seems a shockingly low price to sell a kidney for (especially considering how much the recipient was willing to pay), it’s important to put that figure into context. The average wage paid to workers assembling Apple products at Foxconn is around 2,200 Yuan ($346) a month, so the figure Wang received would have equated to nearly ten months’ salary for someone working at the plant -- a colossal amount of money to a young man still in full-time education.

The trade came to light when the teenager’s mother asked her son how he could afford to buy such expensive electrical devices (the price of an iPad in China starts at 2,988 Yuan ($469) while the most basic iPhone costs 3,988 Yuan ($627) and he confessed all.

Wang reportedly suffered renal failure shortly after the operation and was still too ill to attend the trial’s opening, although his mother, appearing on his behalf, told the court that she did not believe her son had sold his organs expressly to buy Apple products, but had done so because he was concerned about being caught in possession of such a large amount of money.

China banned the trading of human organs in 2007, but demand has led to a growing black market. The Ministry of Health estimates around 1.5 million people in China currently need transplants, but just 5,253 received one in 2011, according to the national kidney transplant registry.

Five of the defendants, including the surgeon who performed the operation, face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, while the four others, who played more minor roles, will be liable for fines. Wang’s representatives are reportedly seeking 2.77 million Yuan ($435,192) in compensation or, to put it another way, just under 928 iPads.