Quebec man's pancreas up for grabs in online auction

My name is Mario Meunier and I have quite a story to tell you...
So reads a rather odd ad (below) placed on the eBay-style online auction site BidOfferBUY. Thirty-six year old Mr Meunier is offering his pancreas for sale to entice endocrine researchers to help him prove the connection between gastric bypass and nesidioblastosis, a pancreatic condition that leads to severe hypoglycemia. Mr Meunier suffers from the condition and is convinced his own gastric bypass operation eight years ago is responsible.

The asking price for the sick pancreas is $500,000 but Mr Meunier, who hails from the Rivière-du-Loup region, near Quebec's border with New Brunswick, insists his goals are academic not monetary.
On his website (PDF), Mr Meunier recounts that when he was operated on in 2000 (he had a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass), he weighed around 200kg (440lbs). Two "magnificent years" passed and Mr Meunier reached his ideal weight of 64kg (142lbs), (not including the 14kg (30lbs) of excess skin he was carrying around). It was then his pancreatic troubles began.

Mr Meunier was due to undergo a partial ablation of the pancreas on February 21 to correct the problem, but he backed out when he found out St Luc Hospital in Montreal wouldn't allow him to keep any pancreatic tissue they removed. "We always have to send the organ to the pathology department for analysis," his surgeon Dr André Roy told La Presse. That's when Mr Meunier decided to take matters into his own hands.

The link between gastric bypass and hypoglycemia was thought to be rare, but a 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests the link may be stronger than previously believed. Nesidioblastosis is extremely rare in the general population, but the researchers found that gastric bypass patients "accounted for 40% of our patients with confirmed cases of nesidioblastosis" during the study period.

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