A Russian man has surprised the medical community by claiming that a liver transplant from an African-American donor has made his skin darker!
It all started when 65-year-old Semen Gendler, an inventor from Krasnodar, was diagnosed with hepatitis C and cancer. He was told that his only hope of survival was a liver transplant, so he decided to fly to the United States for the procedure. “Doctors made it quite clear to me that if I didn’t have a liver transplant I would not live,” Gendler revealed.
“I do a lot of business in the US with partners in New York, and I asked him to help me arrange for the operation where if you have enough money it is possible to do it more quickly than in Russia,” he added. “Fortunately, I was able to afford the cost of the $500,000 operation. In Russia, I would have had to wait too long for a donor.” During the course of the operation, Gendler received the liver of a 38-year-old African-American man. He says that the transplant has saved his life, but then his friends and family began to notice something odd. As he recovered from his illness, his skin was turning darker.
Photo: Semen Gendler
“I noticed that his skin was getting darker,” said Igor Atamanenko, Gendler’s former work colleague. “When he told me they had given him the liver of an African-American man, I guess that was probably the reason for the color change. I have known my friend for years and he has always been, if anything, extremely pale. And now, for the first time ever, he is becoming dark skinned.”
Gendler ruled out the possibility of a tan – he’s always avoided going out in the sun, and now more than ever, after doctors warned him that it could cause his cancer to return. The guy also claims that doctors in the USA confirmed that his darkening skin is directly related to the liver transplant, adding that there have been cases in which Caucasian people turned into African-Americans after similar transplants.
But his new skin color isn’t really bothering him at all. “I could end up much darker than this to be honest, and I don’t care. The main thing is that the liver works and I am healthy. It’s incredible, I am now so full of energy and living between two cities – in New York and Krasnodar – and if my skin ends up dark, who cares? I certainly don’t.”
Somehow this is just too crazy to believe, even for me. There is no real evidence of his claims other that the photos above, and the bit about what the American doctors told him sound pretty shady… We’ll just have to wait and see if Gendler becomes black.
