Posted on 07/05/2007 11:34:16 AM PDT by Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh
The mother of a San Luis Obispo man who died after an attempted organ donation at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center last year claims she never gave hospital officials consent to take her son off life-support and was misinformed when agreeing to the organ harvest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit.
Rosa Navarro also alleges in her June 29 civil lawsuit that a transplant surgeon misrepresented himself as her son’s doctor, an allegation the surgeon’s attorney strongly denies. She also said she agreed to the organ donation only because she believed her son had no chance of survival.
Defendants in the lawsuit — the San Luis Obispo hospital; its parent company, Dallas-based Tenet Corp.; the California Transplant Donor Network; transplant physicians Hootan Roozrokh and Arturo Martinez; and their employer, The Permanente Medical Group Inc.—are accused of assault, battery, fraud, civil conspiracy, negligence, medical malpractice and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Sierra Vista hospital on Tuesday denied any wrongdoing in the Feb. 4, 2006, death of 25-year-old Ruben Navarro.
Rosa Navarro, 54, is asking for unlimited compensation in the death of her son.
Ruben Navarro, who was dying of a rare metabolic disorder, had been on life support for four days and was expected to die. His mother agreed to donate his organs, and the California Transplant Donor Network dispatched its transplant team to Sierra Vista.
Rosa Navarro said during an interview from her Oxnard home Tuesday that when she arrived at the hospital she asked about her son’s condition. She said a hospital nurse told her to speak with the doctor.
“He came over and approached me and said I’m in charge of Ruben,” Navarro said of Roozrokh, who was part of the surgical team from San Francisco dispatched by Oakland-based Organ Transplant Donor Network.
“I asked him, ‘Doctor could you do anything for my boy?’ and he said, ‘Oh, no. Oh no… There’s nothing I can do for a patient like him.’ ”
Navarro said through sobs that Roozrokh asked her if she planned to watch him disconnect her son from life-support.
“He didn’t even ask me, ‘What do you want me to do Ms. Navarro? Do you want me to keep him on the machine or whatever?’ ” Navarro said.
Roozrokh’s attorney, M. Gerry Schwartzbach, told The Tribune on Tuesday that his client never spoke with Rosa Navarro and was not in charge of her son’s medical care.
“He did not have any conversation with her with regard to taking Ruben off the respirator. … Dr. Roozrokh was in the Bay Area,” Schwartzbach said. “I feel very bad for Ms. Navarro because she’s going through a great deal, but unfortunately someone misled her because she never met (Roozrokh) and she never spoke to him. That is absolutely clear.”
Schwartzbach said a local physician made the decision to remove Ruben Navarro from life support.
Ruben Navarro was brought into the operating room at 11 p.m. Feb. 3, 2006, and his breathing tube was removed. But he did not die within 30 minutes—the window during which organs could be harvested. He died nine hours later, according to the lawsuit.
An operating-room nurse reported that standard medical procedures weren’t followed when Navarro was taken off life support.
The lawsuit alleges Roozrokh ordered Ruben Navarro be given lethal doses of morphine and Ativan, an accusation also reported as a finding in a federal investigation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The report showed an intensive care nurse gave Ruben Navarro 220 milligrams of morphine and 80 milligrams of Ativan.
Sierra Vista spokesman Ron Yukelson did not respond to specific allegations against the hospital.
He did say a surgeon contracted with the donor network assumed responsibility for Navarro in violation of hospital policy, which requires a doctor to be credentialed by the hospital to treat a living patient.
District attorney’s investigators have been reviewing the case since March, but have made no decision about filing criminal charges.
“It’s a very unique case. No one’s prosecuted a case like this anywhere,” Assistant District Attorney Dan Hilford said Tuesday. “The case is very complex and deals with issues that require a great deal of research and study.”
State Medical Board spokeswoman Candis Cohen said the agency is investigating Roozrokh.
Martinez, the other doctor on the transplant team, could not be reached for comment.
” But even I know that someone who destroyed his own liver voluntarily by alcoholism should never receive a second liver to destroy..”
never? What if they give up the drink?
How is Larry doing anyway? Is he still drinking?
“...unless of course there’s suddenly a glut of livers lying around with no one claiming them. But I don’t see that happening.”
Sometimes it is difficult to place organs.
It may seem cruel fate for the alcholic to be the only match for a healthy liver - but there it is. Do you deny it?
A good topic for another thread I suppose.
This link will get you to the 2007 budget of UNOS, someone is making an lot of money off of donations, Wages for 2007 $12,749,000.00 Benefits $5,597,000.00, travel $1,903,000.00.
wages are spread over how many people?
Same question for benefits and travel.
I would expect the travel budget to be high.
The point is where does the money come from somebody is selling something and somebody is paying. Now if you have a break down of the number of staff and so forth?
That picture was sent to me several years ago in an email
with the title “How To Tell If Your A$$ Is Too Small. I love it.
I tried to open the document and couldn’t do it - but my computer has been funky that way.
Where does the money come from?
I’m sure others here know more than I do. I’m assuming the state and federal govs. offer funding.
I’m sure there is private funding as well as donations.
But then again...I haven’t read the budget, so I don’t know.
I’ve read all the posts up to this one, and even reviewed some of it to find where anyone called your brother-in-law a butcher or a monster. Nobody used the word “monster” before your post. Narses and I both used the word “butcher,” but not in reference to your bil. As a matter of fact, I can’t find any reference at all to your bil until your post. So what are you talking about?
The reason is there is an organ shortage is because the sale of organs is illegal. It’s price control, with the price set at zero. That means shortage.
If I had plans to be an alcoholic, I would want them to take out half of my liver and freeze it. Then when my liver is destroyed, I could have the frozen half put back.
My bil has done harvesting.
Stereotyping of butchery and monopolizing and getting way rich would apply to him.
“If I had plans to be an alcoholic, I would want them to take out half of my liver and freeze it. Then when my liver is destroyed, I could have the frozen half put back.”
That would be one smart alcoholic.
Yeah, I suspected you were twisting my words, without bothering to ping me. Thank you for confirming it.
I did not call your bil a butcher. I did not say that ethical transplant personnel are butchers. Did you deliberately ignore my post 24, hoping nobody would notice your dishonesty?
I did not say you called my bil a butcher and I did not deliberately “ignore” post #24.
My reference was to somebody else.
Try as hard as you may - this has nothing to do with you.
Then I believe you should give a courtesy ping to the person you were talking about.
The reality is that most organ transplants are taken from living human beings in contravention of moral law. Brain wave activity is almost never fully absent when the butchers start their unholy “harvest”. Why? Organs post death have little value. Those who chose to profit from this industry deserve the highest level of scrutiny. Instead they created a monopoly that excludes real oversight.
The reverse of what De Beers does to diamonds. There is an unending supply of diamonds, but the supply is controlled to keep the price high.
UNOS has a lock on the organ market, no competition, and they control the whole thing without any legal authority.
I agree.
I know that some organs are harvested while the patients are still alive, but I haven’t seen the statistics. I have no idea how common or uncommon it is. But I do know it’s wrong, and anyone who participates in such a practice is a butcher.
It's outrageous. It should be legal. Right now, you could probably sell the rights to your organs in the event of your death for 25K. The organ supply would rise dramatically, and lives would be saved.
The downside? The doctors would lose money(they claim they don't sell the organs, but they do, they just jack up the rates on the related services). Also, all the people of the world who like to tell other people what to do will be unhappy, from the socialists who don't think anybody should sell anything to the people who get offended about things out of vague religious ideas.
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