Chinese Boy Sells Kidney For iPad2

aquabat writes "According to Shanghai Daily, a boy from the Anhui Province desperately wanted to buy Apple's flagship tablet but didn't have enough cash. Rather than waiting to save up the money for the Apple product when it invariably gets marked down, the lad decided to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan (roughly $3,400) so he could afford one. But, surprisingly, the scenario in which the organ was harvested wasn't in the best of conditions, and the boy isn't feeling very well."

Corruption at its finest

[conscarcdr]

According to TFA, the hospital where his kidney was removed was in fact a military one: "PLA 198 hospital", which, when questioned by the police, claimed no knowledge on the broker who arranged the deal, since the whole department was "contracted to a businessman".

Re:People do pay 'big' cash for kidneys

[Dunbal]

There are no "extra" organs. A kidney donor's physiological reserve is diminished after donation. Sure, the donor can live to a ripe old age with just one kidney - provided nothing ever goes wrong. However their ability to deal with extreme cases like infection, toxicity and pH/electrolyte imbalances is compromised and they tend to die a lot faster in these situations than a person with two functional kidneys.

Re:People do pay 'big' cash for kidneys

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of those things that seems "obviously" true, but the data does NOT bear it out. Living kidney donors do not suffer from diminished quality of life or life expectancy. There is a modest increase in blood pressure with increased risk of hypertension but minimal decline in eGFR (ie the remaining kidney picks up most of the slack). Cohorts with good follow-up have followed subjects as far out as 28 years post donation without significantly increased mortality.

The set of ICU-level conditions that would rapidly kill a living kidney donor but not lead to long-term morbidity/mortality for a non-donor are so small as to be negligible.

The people who do worst as donors are the obese, but I am not aware of any research comparing obese living kidney donors to obese non-donors, so it isn't clear to me at all that their lesser outcomes (worse progression of hypertension with proteinuria) represent an interaction between obesity and loss of renal function rather than just the pernicious effects of obesity.