A San Francisco transplant surgeon was criminally charged Monday with excessively prescribing drugs to a 25-year-old disabled man last year in order to hasten his death and harvest his organs sooner.
The felony charges are believed to be the first in the nation against a physician for his role in a transplant.
Experts said the case is likely to raise uneasiness among potential organ donors and could prompt doctors to shy away from a somewhat controversial practice of retrieving organs before a patient is brain dead.
The San Luis Obispo County district attorney's office accused Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, 33, of dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.
The surgeon allegedly ordered massive amounts of narcotic painkillers and sedatives for Ruben Navarro, a physically and mentally disabled man, on Feb. 3, 2006. In addition, Roozrokh is accused of administering the antiseptic Betadine through a feeding tube into Navarro's stomach, a sterilization procedure typically done after a donor is dead.
"The law and the facts indicated that Dr. Roozrokh ... tried to accelerate [Navarro's] death to facilitate the harvesting of his organs," said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Brown.
Navarro survived for more than seven hours after he was removed from life support and given the drugs. By that time, his organs were no longer viable and could not be recovered.
Roozrokh's lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, called his client an "extremely dedicated and accomplished organ transplant surgeon" and said the charges filed against him were "unfounded and ill-advised."
"Dr. Roozrokh did not commit any crime," Schwartzbach said in a written statement.
If convicted of the three counts, Roozrokh could receive up to eight years in state prison and a $20,000 fine, the district attorney's office said. A warrant has been issued for Roozrokh's arrest, and he is expected to turn himself in this week. He will be required to post a $10,000 bond.
Roozrokh was a surgeon with Kaiser Permanente's now-defunct kidney transplant program in San Francisco when he and a Kaiser colleague went to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo to retrieve Navarro's organs. However, the two surgeons were not working on behalf of Kaiser when they went to Sierra Vista but for the group that procures and distributes organs in much of Northern and Central California.
