Don't get me wrong, I believe in organ donation. I just want heroic measures to be taken before they use my body for a scavenger hunt. :redface:
I hate to admit it but this is the reason I don't have that little box checked on the back of my drivers license saying that I am an organ donor. I heard stories like this way back in the late 1970's.
February 27, 2008
Surgeon Accused of Speeding a Death to Get Organs
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. On a winter night in 2006, a disabled and brain damaged man named Ruben Navarro was wheeled into an operating room at a hospital here. By most accounts, Mr. Navarro, 25, was near death, and doctors hoped that he might sustain other lives by donating his kidneys and liver.
But what happened to Mr. Navarro quickly went from the potentially life-saving to what law enforcement officials say was criminal. In what transplant experts believe is the first such case in the country, prosecutors have charged the surgeon, Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh, with prescribing excessive and improper doses of drugs, apparently in an attempt to hasten Mr. Navarros death to retrieve his organs sooner.
A preliminary hearing begins here on Wednesday, with Dr. Roozrokh facing three felony counts relating to Mr. Navarros treatment as a donor. At the heart of the case is whether Dr. Roozrokh, who studied at a transplant fellowship program at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was pursuing organs at any cost or had become entangled in a web of misunderstanding about a lesser-used harvesting technique known as donation after cardiac death.
Dr. Roozrokh has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said the charges were the result of overzealous prosecutors. But the case has sent a shudder through the tight-knit field of transplant surgeons if convicted on all counts, Dr. Roozrokh could face eight years in prison while also worrying donation advocacy groups that organ donors could be frightened away.
If you think a malpractice lawsuit is scaring surgeons off, wait to see what happens when people see a surgeon being charged criminally and going to jail, said Dr. Goran B. Klintmalm, president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, who added that he considered the case unprecedented.
According to a police interview with Jennifer Endsley, a nurse, the transplant team, including Dr. Roozrokh, stayed in the room during the removal of the ventilator and gave orders for medication, something that would violate donation protocol. Ms. Endsley, who stayed to watch because she had never participated in this type of procedure, also told the police that Dr. Roozrokh asked an intensive care nurse to administer more candy meaning drugs after Mr. Navarro did not die immediately after his ventilator was removed.
Mr. Schwartzbach said he would address the accusations in court. I think a great many people, lay and medical, will realize they have been significantly misinformed, he said.
Several months after the incident, federal health officials cited the hospital for a series of lapses, including failing to grant temporary clinical privileges to Dr. Roozrokh, who was under contract with the donor network. Last February, the United Network for Organ Sharing reprimanded the California Transplant Donor Network for breaking established protocol in the case. The donor network declined to comment.
Ms. Navarro has filed a civil suit against Dr. Roozrokh, the donor network and other doctors in the operating room, and has settled a lawsuit against the hospital. A spokesman for the hospital, Ron Yukelson, said a plan to correct the problems had been accepted by federal health officials.
Ms. Navarro said she remained angry about the way her sons life ended.
He didnt deserve to be like that, to go that way, she said. He died without dignity and sympathy and without respect.
Melanie Carroll contributed reporting from San Luis Obispo, and Lawrence K. Altman from New York.
I hate to admit it but this is the reason I don't have that little box checked on the back of my drivers license saying that I am an organ donor. I heard stories like this way back in the late 1970's.
February 27, 2008
Surgeon Accused of Speeding a Death to Get Organs
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. On a winter night in 2006, a disabled and brain damaged man named Ruben Navarro was wheeled into an operating room at a hospital here. By most accounts, Mr. Navarro, 25, was near death, and doctors hoped that he might sustain other lives by donating his kidneys and liver.
But what happened to Mr. Navarro quickly went from the potentially life-saving to what law enforcement officials say was criminal. In what transplant experts believe is the first such case in the country, prosecutors have charged the surgeon, Dr. Hootan C. Roozrokh, with prescribing excessive and improper doses of drugs, apparently in an attempt to hasten Mr. Navarros death to retrieve his organs sooner.
A preliminary hearing begins here on Wednesday, with Dr. Roozrokh facing three felony counts relating to Mr. Navarros treatment as a donor. At the heart of the case is whether Dr. Roozrokh, who studied at a transplant fellowship program at the Stanford University School of Medicine, was pursuing organs at any cost or had become entangled in a web of misunderstanding about a lesser-used harvesting technique known as donation after cardiac death.
Dr. Roozrokh has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said the charges were the result of overzealous prosecutors. But the case has sent a shudder through the tight-knit field of transplant surgeons if convicted on all counts, Dr. Roozrokh could face eight years in prison while also worrying donation advocacy groups that organ donors could be frightened away.
If you think a malpractice lawsuit is scaring surgeons off, wait to see what happens when people see a surgeon being charged criminally and going to jail, said Dr. Goran B. Klintmalm, president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, who added that he considered the case unprecedented.
According to a police interview with Jennifer Endsley, a nurse, the transplant team, including Dr. Roozrokh, stayed in the room during the removal of the ventilator and gave orders for medication, something that would violate donation protocol. Ms. Endsley, who stayed to watch because she had never participated in this type of procedure, also told the police that Dr. Roozrokh asked an intensive care nurse to administer more candy meaning drugs after Mr. Navarro did not die immediately after his ventilator was removed.
Mr. Schwartzbach said he would address the accusations in court. I think a great many people, lay and medical, will realize they have been significantly misinformed, he said.
Several months after the incident, federal health officials cited the hospital for a series of lapses, including failing to grant temporary clinical privileges to Dr. Roozrokh, who was under contract with the donor network. Last February, the United Network for Organ Sharing reprimanded the California Transplant Donor Network for breaking established protocol in the case. The donor network declined to comment.
Ms. Navarro has filed a civil suit against Dr. Roozrokh, the donor network and other doctors in the operating room, and has settled a lawsuit against the hospital. A spokesman for the hospital, Ron Yukelson, said a plan to correct the problems had been accepted by federal health officials.
Ms. Navarro said she remained angry about the way her sons life ended.
He didnt deserve to be like that, to go that way, she said. He died without dignity and sympathy and without respect.
Melanie Carroll contributed reporting from San Luis Obispo, and Lawrence K. Altman from New York.