Online auction king eBay has a variety of items for bid from automobiles to Beanie Babies to sports memorabilia to antique kitchen appliances. Sounds like everything, no? Well, it wasn't - until a "fully functional kidney" appeared for auction last week and caused a sensation at the popular Web site. It also caused over $5.7 million in bids before eBay stepped in and stopped the sale.
That is because selling human organs is a Federal offence, felony class, and can get you no less than five years in the calaboose and cost you $50,000 or more in fines.
And eBay is scrambling to cover itself in the wake of the unusual auction. Vice President of Marketing Steve Westly tells CNN the site has a very clear policy against selling anything that is illegal to sell. Even so, eBay officials were not entirely certain if the kidney offer was legitimate and the bids were serious.
The site page posted the seller as from Sunrise, Florida, and included a notice saying the buyer could choose either his right or left kidney, "as I need the other one to live."
"Any time you have an open trading environment, with almost six million registered users, you're likely to see somebody who tries to bend the rules or pull a prank on their fellow users," eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove told CNN. He says eBay has no system to spot a questionable offer but counts on users to tip them off when they think they're on the site.
At this writing, the item is still showing up on an eBay listing - as is a second listing showing bids over $2.5 million. However, trying to call up the pages by clicking on the listing titles gets a notification that they're no longer valid in the eBay database entries.
Not that eBay is a total stranger to human organ listings, though the company says they happen rarely and the company deals with it at once. Also this year, the company barred guns and ammunition auctions after some sellers tried offering a rocket launcher, a missile, a bazooka, and other military weapons, according to CNN.
Incidentally, a search on eBay for prostitution yielded up no practitioners of the world's oldest profession offering to auction their wares. But nowadays, who knows?
