MD Accused Of Speeding Death To Get Organs

Calif. Transplant Surgeon Charged With Using Drugs To Hasten Demise Of Brain-Damaged Man

(CBS)  A California transplant surgeon is accused of hastening a patient's death via a lethal dose of drugs so his organs could be harvested.

As CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports, Dr. Hootan Roozrokh was in court Wednesday for a preliminary hearing on charges he ordered that excessive doses of drugs be given to a brain-damaged patient who was near death.

"He didn't deserve to die like that. He wasn't ready to go," cried Rosa Navarro, whose late son, Ruben is at the center of the closely-watched and unprecedented case.

After suffering cardiac arrest, says Whitaker, the profoundly disabled 25-year-old was removed from life support systems at the Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Doctors from the California Transplant Donor Network, led by Roozrokh, were standing by to harvest his organs.

Rose Navarro says it's what happened next that moved the situation from the hospital to the courtroom: "They gave him a big amount of medication, to speed up his death."

Why?

"To harvest his organs," she replied through tears. "I will never be the same, because of what they did to my boy."

The San Luis Obispo prosecutor says Roozrokh tried to hasten Navarro's death with a massive, lethal cocktail of morphine, sedative, and the antiseptic Betadine, a poison. She charged him with three felony counts: dependant adult abuse, administering a harmful substance, and prescribing an unlawful controlled substance.

Roozrokh maintains he did nothing wrong. Still, if convicted, he could get up to eight years in prison.

Thousands of lives are saved each year by donated organs, Whitaker points out.

The Association of Transplant Surgeons fears this case will result in fewer donations.

Medical ethicists, such as Michael Grodin, hope it will encourage more humane harvesting. "There's almost this image of people waiting over them to get their organs," Grodin says, "you know -- the transplant people waiting to say, 'Oh, we can get another organ as soon as we declare them dead, so we'll jump in and take their organs.' So, that's a big problem."

"The issue," says Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who heads the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health, "is that, in cases where it's a planned death, (when doctors are) going to terminate some life-sustaining treatment, there is this sense that they're just waiting for the death to happen to harvest the organs. And that's, I think, what is worrying people."

Emanuel told co-anchor Harry Smith on The Early Show Thursday that, "Getting a standardized protocol for how to harvest organs with patients who are going to die, something that the clinicians and the transplant surgeons agree to, something the ethicists agree to, and something the lawyers agree to, is very important. ... It's unclear in this case whether the protocol was adhered to or not. But I think getting something that everyone in the country agrees to as ethical and legal is a very important lesson that we could learn from this case."

He also says, "It's hard to know what to think about this case. There's obviously a conflict about the facts and about exactly what went on."

Rosa Navarro says she wants justice: "I don't want this thing to happen again to anybody."

She says her son died without dignity; she's doesn't want it to have been in vain.

[grammawhamma]

rf35: EXACTLY!!

[rf35]

The more I look at this case, the more it sounds like the hysterical ranting of an emotionally traumatized woman who didn''t understand what the doctor was doing. If I were a judge, I would order counseling for the mother before allowing the case to be heard. SHAME on CBS for reporting this without investigating the valididty of the charges and spinning it so that fewer people will donate organs.

[posey123]

My sister has been tormented by suspected similar situation in our brother''s death in 2002. We were given info when very sleep deprived but from experiences with our mother''s cancer related demise knew that removal from IV fluids and giving diuretic was to hasten death. Because of my sister''s torment to this day, I''m no longer an organ donor and she is legally able to decide my deathbed options. We had to really convince my attorney that she wants this responsibility and I want to spare her the wondering if she could have done more. Our sister in law was even more sleep deprived and not functioning, she just wanted to follow my brother''s wishes but we''re not sure of the ethics in his treatment.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by thgdriver

I am in total agreement with you, until we reach the day when a poor person has an equal chance at transplant surgery as a rich person, I will not be an organ donor.

[frankbowers]

I say thanks to the MEDIA for this story and any other of the nature.
I think it is time the media jumps on to stories like this to stop it before it is too late.
The doctor need his license revoked and then jailed for a long time.
Frank Bowers

[frankbowers]

This is the very reason I will not donate any thing to the next generation at the age of 70 I as an insurance agent have seen this happen at least 10 times not counting this one as i do not know his condition but as a mexican I do not care. Illegal parents do not make a legal son. Frank Bowers in Austin TX

[grammawhamma]

Posted by JAFO21 at 11:44 AM

You explained it perfect. I am a nurse and this type of article will cost many lives. It will scare misinformed lay people and keep them from donating their organs. Shame on the media.

People please be organ donors...your final gift to humanity.

[libsrweak]

the wicked and the blasphemous will be punished..THIS IS TRAGIC!!!!

[mythoughtsr]

GaVol51, my point is that there will always be people who do these sort of things. I also do not appreciate the media writing an article of this nature that is based on a parent''s grief and speculation. I think that there needs to be a more complete investigation before this doctor is vilified. In this country we USED to have an "innocent until guilty" concept but that all goes out the window. I''ll bet almost everyone who has read this article has convicted this man. Notice the MOTHER is the one saying he was given drugs "to hasten his death".

JAFO21 wrote an EXCELLENT post and that should be read over and over by everyone reading this story. When my relative was removed from life support, they were very uncomfortable and given larger than normal doses of medicine. Death was imminent and we were all able to gather and say goodbye and be with them, even after the drugs were administered. They passed without pain and did not suffer that last day. I still miss that person but what was done was right. We DO NOT KNOW if that is the case in this matter. The mother is speaking out and there has only been a preliminary hearing, that is NOT even the beginning. The media twists and reports speculation and bias. This doctor''s career is over and he might not have done anything wrong.

[rational_1]

A question to any doctors out there. why would someone want to use poison and drugs on an organ about to be harvested, and transplanted into another person? Wouldn''''t that possibly cause harm to the person recieving the organ?
Posted by AKbirdy at 12:24 PM : Feb 28, 2008

I''m not a physician but I can answer that question. Yes the organ to be transplanted, say a kidney or liver, might have a high amount of drug in it. However, when it''s transplanted into the host body and connected to the host''s circulatory system the drug will re-distribute throughout the new body and the overall concentration in the host body will be much much lower than in the donor''s body. Thus, no worries of toxicity to the host.