Police are investigating whether a Kaiser Permanente transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the death last February of a 26-year-old San Luis Obispo man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly.
The allegations, if true, would constitute a grave breach of the nation's organ transplant rules, as well as a public relations setback for those promoting organ donation, experts in transplantation said.
San Luis Obispo police and the Medical Board of California are looking into the conduct of Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, who was a surgeon at Kaiser's now-defunct kidney transplant program in San Francisco.
At issue is whether he ordered excessive doses of powerful pain medication to speed the death of Ruben Navarro, according to several sources familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations are ongoing.
Roozrokh could not be reached for comment. His attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, acknowledged that his client may have made some mistakes but said that "he certainly wasn't the only one."
"I just don't think that Dr. Roozrokh ought to be crucified as a result of this incident or his career destroyed," said Schwartzbach, who declined to address specific allegations.
Medical board spokeswoman Candis Cohen said her agency is also investigating the conduct of a second physician present during the incident. That person, Kaiser officials confirmed, is Dr. Arturo Martinez, who at the time was the surgical director of Kaiser's transplant program. Martinez declined to comment Tuesday.
Neither surgeon was attempting to recover the organs on behalf of Kaiser; rather, they were working on behalf of the group that procures and distributes organs in much of Northern and Central California. Transplant surgeons commonly perform such duties.
Dr. Timothy Pruett, president-elect of the United Network for Organ Sharing, called the allegations "horrific."
He worried that they could scare people away from donating organs to help the 95,000 people awaiting life-saving transplants nationwide. UNOS is the federal contractor charged with ensuring the safety and equity of the nation's transplant system.
"We have to guarantee to the public that we're not going to go out and kill people to get their organs," said Pruett, chief of transplant surgery at the University of Virginia. "That's the worst of those cheap sci-fi books: 'The ghoulish docs are out pulling the plugs on these poor defenseless people, trying to snatch their organs.' "
