🚀 go-pugleaf

Alan Smithee wrote:
> Surgeon accused of trying to 'harvest organs'
> 
> Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
> Wednesday August 1, 2007
> The Guardian 
> 
> A California transplant surgeon has been accused of hastening the
> death of a severely disabled patient in order to harvest his organs.
> If found guilty, Hootan Roozrokh faces up to eight years in prison.
> Dr Roozrokh was part of a team preparing to operate on Ruben Navarro,
> 25, who had been on a life support machine and was found to be
> unresponsive. The patient's family had agreed to donate his organs.
> 
> In the operating room at the Sierra Vista medical centre in San Luis
> Obispo county, 180 miles north of Los Angeles, Dr Roozrokh, 33,
> ordered a total of 200mg of morphine and 80mg of the sedative Ativan
> for the patient, far above normal doses. He also administered the
> antiseptic Betadine through a tube into Navarro's stomach, a
> sterilisation procedure normally done after death. But Navarro
> survived for more than seven hours after being removed from life
> support and given the drugs. The time limit for organs to remain
> viable after life support has been withdrawn is 30 minutes.
> 
> Navarro was returned to intensive care, where he died the next
> morning.
> "The law and the facts indicated that Dr Roozrokh ... tried to
> accelerate [Navarro's] death to facilitate the harvesting of his
> organs," said chief deputy district attorney Stephen Brown.
> 
> Prosecutors said they were not pursuing murder charges because they
> did not believe the drugs caused Navarro's death. Under Californian
> law, transplant surgeons are forbidden from being involved in the
> treatment of potential organ donors before they are dead. "The lines
> weren't just blurred; [Dr Roozrokh] took over," Mr Brown said.
> "Central to this case is the mistreatment of a disabled patient."
> 
> Gerald Schwartzbach, Dr Roozrokh's lawyer, called the charges
> "unfounded and ill-advised", and said his client "has unfairly been
> the subject of an 18-month witch-hunt".
> 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2138938,00.html

Not only did this unfortunate incident happen over 1 year ago (February 2006),
the appropriate action was taken against all offending physicians and staff
involved.

Nothing like dredging up old news, huh?

-- 
Notan