Indian police search for teen surgeon

AP via Houston Chronicle ^ | 6.26.07 | Shok Sharma

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

A 15-year-old boy who allegedly delivered a baby by Caesarean section in an attempt to set a world record as the youngest surgeon apparently fled as police prepared to arrest him on Tuesday.

Raj Sekharan, superintendent of police in Tiruchirappalli district in southern Tamil Nadu state, said the boy had absconded and police were looking for him.

On Monday police arrested the parents of Dhileepan Raj, both doctors who supervised their son while he allegedly performed the Caesarean section. They were charged with cheating, forgery of records, endangering human life, concealing evidence and abetting a crime.

The two were jailed pending trial. If convicted, they could be sentenced to up to seven years each, Sekharan said.

The Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian Medical Association said last week that Dr. K. Murugesan showed a video recording of his son performing a Caesarean birth.

The video allegedly showed Murugesan anesthetizing the patient before the boy started the operation in his father's maternity hospital in Manaparai city, said Venkatesh Prasad, secretary of the medical association.

Murugesan told the association that he wanted to see his son's name in the Guinness Book of World Records, Prasad said.

Amarilis Espinoza, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records, said in an e-mail Guinness does not endorse such attempts because they encourage "bad medicine."

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

In this undated file photograph, Dr. K. Murugesan, right, his doctor wife Gandhimathi, left, and son Dhileepan Raj look on at their residence at Manaparai, near Trichy, 316 kilometers (198 miles) southwest of Chennai, India. The 15-year-old Raj performed a filmed Caesarean section birth under his parents' watch in southern India in an apparent bid to gain a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest surgeon. Police on Monday arrested the doctor couple a government official said. (AP Photo/Dinamalar,file)

[Dan Evans]

I’ve heard about this before and I wondered how a 15 year-old kid can become a surgeon. And now I know, he can’t!

[SteveMcKing]

Some investors are likely trying to protect India’s healthcare image. Certain hospitals in India are like vacation spots where people come from all over the world to have surgery.

But it’s only image. I can’t imagine the parents did anything wrong within the context of mud-world medicine.

[04-Bravo]

I’d rather have Jethro Bodine perform an operation on me.

[NonValueAdded]

Doogie, paging Doogie to the nearest courtesy phone.

[So Circumstanced]

An undocumented surgeon?...

Where’s George “Internationalist New World Order” Bush when you need him?

It is he, (President Bush) who could bestow an amnesty for the kid’s illegal behavior.

[rawhide]

IMO, the kid should not be arrested. His dad I can agree with that, and maybe the mom? But not the kid because he was only doing what his asinine father told him to do.