A doctor has been charged with deliberately hastening the death of a disabled man so that he could harvest his kidneys for another patient, in the first case of its kind in America.

The case centres on allegations that Hootan Roozrokh, a transplant surgeon in California, ordered a nurse to administer lethal doses of narcotic painkillers and sedatives to Ruben Navarro, who was terminally ill, after taking him off life support. The man died hours later.

Prosecutors claim that Dr Roozrokh, 33, acted without a legitimate medical purpose in his handling of Mr Navarro, 25, who suffered from a neurological disorder and had been kept alive artificially for several days after suffering respiratory and cardiac arrest.

Rosa Navarro, the patient’s mother, had agreed that her son’s organs should be used for transplant in the event of his death but did not authorise him to be removed from life support or given drugs to hasten his death.

“The facts indicate that Dr Roozrokh tried to accelerate his death to facilitate the harvesting of his organs,” said Stephen Brown, deputy district attorney for San Luis Obispo County. “The central issue of the case was the mistreatment of a severely disabled adult.”

However, Gerald Schwartzbach, Dr Roozroh’s lawyer, said that his client had been the victim of a witch-hunt and that the criminal charges against him of dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose were “unfounded and ill-advised”. He added: “He is an extremely dedicated and accomplished organ transplant surgeon . . . Dr Roozrokh did not commit any crime.”

The doctor faces a maximum prison sentence of eight years if found guilty.

Mr Navarro’s organs were deemed useless for transplant because of the seven-hour time lapse between his life-support equipment being switched off and his death.

The US, like Britain, operates an “opt-in” system, meaning that anyone who wants their parts used for transplant after their death must carry a donor card, which is registered on a national database network. But there is a critical gulf between supply and demand: the latest figures from the United Network for Organ Sharing show that 9,218 transplants were carried out between January and April this year, yet there are 96,849 patients currently on the waiting list.

Arthur Caplan, director of the Centre for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said last night: “If the allegations in this case are true, the doctor’s behaviour would be alarming, shocking and devastating, because it might actually lead some people to shy away from becoming potential organ donors.” Doctors are banned by law from raising the issue of organ donation until a person has been pronounced dead by a practitioner independent of the transplant process.

At the time of the incident in February, Dr Roozroh was a surgeon at a hospital in San Francisco but went to a medical centre in San Luis Obispo, where Mr Navarro was a patient, on behalf of a group that procures and distributes organs in California.

“You are supposed to keep a very tall wall between who’s managing the patient’s care and pronouncing death, and the triggering of any activity regarding organ donation. If you hasten death, that not only breaches the wall, it blows it down completely,” Dr Caplan said. “Discussions about moving towards an opt-out system are imperilled as a result. People will be worried that if they carry a donor card they might not be treated as they should.”

Donation details

13,266 kidneys were donated in the US in 2005

65,859 people were on the waiting list at the end of the year

84 out of every 1,000 patients waiting for a kidney in the US in 2005 died before an organ was found

95 per cent of patients given a kidney from a living donor survive, compared with 90 per cent from a dead donor

58 successfully recovered donated kidneys were disposed of in 2005 because they had spent too long with an inadequate oxygen supply in the donor’s body

30,000—50,000 rupees (£360-£610) was the average payment to donors in an illegal organ-selling scheme in Bombay in 2005

200,000 rupees were charged to those purchasing kidneys

Source: US Department of Health and Human Services; British Medical Journal

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