- MOSCOW -- Four Moscow doctors
have been arrested for plotting to murder a patient so that they could
use his organs for transplantation in an illegal trade which Russians fear
is rife but which is seldom brought to court.
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- Two doctors at the Moscow city hospital No 20 and two
in the city's transplantation service were arrested yesterday after a scandal
which halted transplants throughout the country.
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- The case began when an informant told the police early
last year that she had arrived at the hospital to find her friend had been
"cut open" for the organs after an accident, the Russian media
reported.
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- The victim's family pushed the police to investigate,
and they began a surveillance of transplants in the Moscow hospitals.
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- On April 11 last year a man of 51 with serious head injuries,
identified in police documents as A Orekhov, was taken to Hospital 20.
A prosecutor's statement said: "The patient was listed in critical
condition, which is why information about a possible donor was sent to
the Moscow coordination centre for organ donation."
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- Alerted by the surveillance, the police rushed to the
hospital with two of their own doctors and found Mr Orekhov on the operating
table.
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- Prosecutors said they found his body prepared for kidney
removal.
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- His hands were tied behind his head and his belly was
covered in green antiseptic, was reported.
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- The theatre lamp was on and the surgical implements ready,
but the officers found that his heart was still beating and he was technically
alive. They tried to revive him, but he died of his injuries.
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- Russian law requires the patient to be "biologically
dead" before the organs can be extracted, and a declaration signed
by the intensive care doctor in charge of the patient and a police doctor
before a transplant can be performed.
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- The investigators allegedly found no such document.
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- The four people arrested yesterday were Irina Litsman,
deputy head of intensive care at Hospital 20, Lyubov Pravdenko, a doctor
there, and the transplant surgeons at the donor centre, Pyotr Pyatnichuk
and Bairm Shagdurov.
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- Dr Litsman has also been charged with abuse of office.
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- The illicit trade in human organs is a problem throughout
the former Soviet Union, where young men in impoverished states such as
Moldova sell their kidneys to foreigners who are willing to pay up to $250,000.
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- According to one case studied by European officials,
the donor can be paid as little as $5,000.
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- The incident at Hospital 20 finally broke the silence
about the trade and prompted a widespread investigation of hospital practices.
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- A moratorium on transplants declared after the incident
lasted for months, causing an outcry from the sick and transplant surgeons.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1205618,00.html
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