Featured Image Credit: Cynthia Lee / Alamy / Apple
Topics: Apple, iPhone, World News
Anish Vij
The idea that a person can't live without the new iPhone but is willing live with just one kidney has brought over a huge wave of concern.
A viral image posted by a beauty clinic in Laos shows a group of people holding up their new iPhone, while displaying their 'surgical scars', after supposedly selling their kidneys in return for a smartphone.
Many have believed the photo to be real, however, its been reported that the clinic, Dr. Nith Beauty Center, used the images as a marketing ploy.
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Thai Red Cross Organ Donation Center have condemned the stunt and have classed it as 'immoral'.
Sophon Mekthon of the Thai Red Cross Organ Donation Center said: "There is no organ trading like this. It’s prohibited.
"It’s inappropriate that organ trading is promoted, especially to exchange one for money to buy an iPhone. It’s immoral and unethical."
One Twitter user commented: "Today on internet a photo of three people who sold their kidney to buy iphone 14 went viral! "This photo wants to show us the whole world we live in. That this is times when people will do anything..."
Another wrote: "I want you to know that this kind of joke is not funny at all.
"And do you know what values are being created/directed to society?"
The iPhone 14 retails for between 32,900 baht ($1,254) to 50,900 baht ($1,940), while Thais earn $343 minimum wage a month.
UNILAD has contacted Apple and Dr. Nith Beauty Center for comment.
Back in 2020, a teenager sold his kidney to buy the new iPhone and was likely to have been left bedridden for life after suffering renal deficiency.
Wang Shangkun was 17 years old when he decided to sell his kidney black market in exchange for the equivalent of $3,200.
The teenager, whose family lived in one of China’s poorest provinces, wanted to buy an Apple device, but didn’t have enough money to afford it. While he was on the internet one day he received a message from an organ harvester in an online chatroom, who told him he could get 20,000 yuan ($3,000) for selling the organ.
His mother said: "When my son came home he had a laptop computer and an Apple phone.
"I asked him where all the money 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."
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