Originally published October 14 2005
Consequences of LA transplant scandal coming to light
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
After the death of a patient illegally displaced from the liver recipient waiting list, Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr., director of St. Vincent's liver transplant program, resigned from the medical staff.
LOS ANGELES - A high school principal who had been first in line for a liver transplant died less than a year after an organ improperly went to someone else and records were faked to cover the switch, a published report said.
St. Vincent Medical Center removed the educator from the waiting list, but he was told his condition was stable and was left to believe his turn would still come, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
"They killed my father," Majed Al-Harthi said by phone from Rome, where he works for a Saudi oil and gas company.
Ramos stepped down as chairman of the hospital's bioethics committee but remains on staff.
Ramos' lawyer, Evelina Serafini, said her client knew the organ had been intended for Al-Harthi but assumed that staff had received permission for it to be transplanted in the other man, who also was a Saudi national.
Lopez referred calls to his attorney, David Fisher, who declined to comment.
Under national transplant rules, St. Vincent's should have turned down the liver because Al-Harthi was in Saudi Arabia and couldn't have flown to the hospital in time for the surgery.
Instead, St. Vincent's accepted the organ in Al-Harthi's name.
A hospital clerk then falsified records to make it appear that Al-Harthi had received the organ, hospital officials acknowledged.
Dr. Ronald Busuttil, the head liver transplant surgeon at UCLA, said Al-Harthi's condition was dire and that he would have advised the patient to move to Los Angeles from Saudi Arabia to be immediately ready for a transplant.
Instead, Al-Harthi was told his condition was stable and that he should visit St. Vincent once a year for evaluations, according to a letter from Lopez to the Saudi Embassy.
A limited number of foreigners are allowed to join waiting lists at U.S. hospitals.
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