eBay pulls plug on human kidney auction

Online shoppers bid nearly $6 million for a human kidney offered on the Internet auction site eBay before the company intervened to block the illegal sale, executives said yesterday.

"eBay has zero tolerance for illegal items on the site," said Steve Westly, eBay's vice president of marketing. "We have a very clear policy against this."

Advertised as a "fully functional kidney", the item was put up for sale last week and had pulled a top bid of $5,750,100.

Officials at eBay said it was impossible to tell if the offer - or the bids - were genuine, but decided to take no chances. Trafficking in human organs is a federal felony punishable by a minimum of five years in prison and fines as high as $250,000.

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