The mother of a Chinese man has spoken of her horror after finding out that her son, identified only as 'Big Zheng', had arranged the sale of one of his iPads to fund the purchase of a kidney in a shady internet transaction.
The 43-year-old told a local TV station that he had arranged the deal after seeing an online advert offering human kidneys to those willing to have their Apple consumer products removed. He confessed that, as a man with near-total kidney failure, he had an 'admittedly shallow' interest in the human renal function, and had long been obsessed with what UrinaryWorld magazine recently voted 'most essential organ of all time'.
The story only came to light after the man's mother became suspicious after noticing a 'gaping hole' in her son's iPad docking station where the device would usually be charging in preparation for another day fulfilling essential bodily requirements. Her attention was also drawn to the fact that her son no longer seemed interested in his old dialysis machine or his chanca piedra pills, preferring to go out playing squash and enjoying a beer afterwards.
'When he came home that night,' explained his mother, 'he had an unusual spring in his step and no problem excreting waste materials via his urine. I knew at once something was up. I wanted to know how he had got enough money to buy a new kidney and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his iPads. I was shattered.'
'I can't believe he did it,' sobbed his mother. He might feel like he can live without it now, but he doesn't know what losing an iPad could mean. If his other one ever stops working he'll have no way of surfing Flash-free websites on the move - that could be the end of him!'
This case highlights China's shocking black market in iPad trafficking. A scarcity of the desirable devices has led many naive unfortunates vulnerable to selling their cherished devices for large sums of money, even in the knowledge that the grim transaction will leave them dangerously short of Angry Birds capability.