Deadly Trade – The Weird Side of the Internet

Deadly Trade – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

When people do stupid things, and I mean really stupid things, we’re all tempted to ridicule and mock, and sometimes we’re just stunned at what that person was foolish enough to do. But then sometimes you feel sorry for them, that they thought they had to do something so foolish to get what they want, and especially in cases of young people, you have to wonder if somebody should have been there to protect them from themselves.

Meet Xiao Wang, a 24-year-old Chinese man who was once a 17-year-old Chinese boy desperately wanting an iPhone 4, which was, at the time, the Big Daddy of phones. His parents wouldn’t get it for him because they couldn’t get it for him because even back then the iPhone was “arm and leg” expensive. And no one wanted to trade arms and legs, but Xiao had one thing that was in demand – a healthy kidney.

He went to a shady middleman and an even shadier doctor and traded his healthy organ for $3,200.00 American, which was enough for an iPhone 4. They told him he could lead a normal life with one kidney, and that was true if they bothered to not botch the operation. And they would say they didn’t; they got the kidney, he survived. But the operating room wasn’t sanitary, and he got an infection that led into the other kidney. Now he’s on permanent dialysis.

I said before about wanting to ridicule people doing stupid things, but clearly something was wrong in his life where he felt he needed an iPhone 4. Maybe he went to a rich school and the kids made fun of him for not having one. But I think the whole entirety of life failed this kid, and what’s worse is he failed himself.

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