Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, a surgeon for the now-closed Kaiser Permanente’s kidney transplant program, is charged with prescribing excessive drugs to a disabled patient to speed up his death and harvest his organs.
Prosecutors in San Luis Obispo County claim Dr. Roozrokh administered a harmful drug, and prescribed excessive doses of morphine and a sedative to 25-year old Ruben Navarro, who was born with a neurological disorder, cerebral palsy and seizures.
Navarro suffered respiratory and cardiac arrest, and slipped into a coma in 2006. He was later taken off life support, and passed away a day later. His organs could not be harvested, as he did not die within the prescribed 30 minutes of being removed from life support.
State law prohibits transplant surgeons from being involved in the treatment of potential organ donors before they are declared dead. This is the first such criminal case against a transplant doctor in the United States.
If found guilty, Dr. Roozrokh faces up to eight years in state prison, or up to one year in jail, and a $20,000 fine as a condition of probation.
Yahoo News July 31, 2007
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
Without making any assumptions about Dr. Roozrokh’s intentions to kill Navarro just to get his hands on the man’s organs, this is still a sad story pointing out the tragedy of over-medicating with toxic drugs.
More than three-quarters of a million Americans die needlessly every year because of conventional medicine mistakes. Whether or not they are real mistakes or not is up for debate. One way of looking at the current medical system is to take the stance that prescribing dangerous chemicals to people who don’t need them is not a “mistake.”
The American medical system is the leading cause of death in America today. If that were due to some “mistake,” wouldn’t someone have gathered up a task force and put new procedures in place to eliminate the majority of these snafu’s?
The truth is there’s too much money at stake. They don’t want to fix the problem, because one of the main problems is the excessive prescription of patent drugs.
It is indisputable that our current system has enormous benefit and value in the treatment of acute medical emergencies that require the use of trauma centers, skilled surgeons, and intensive care units. But when this system is applied to chronic degenerative health conditions, which compromise more than 95% of all health problems, it fails miserably.
The current medical system in America is so desperately in need of change, and facilitating this change is, and will continue to be, a substantial portion of my vision.
It is vitally important for you to understand the basic principles behind disease, and to focus on finding the underlying cause of whatever problem you may suffer from. You can only resolve it by addressing its cause.
What many people do not realize is that it is possible to maintain total health by avoiding unnecessary drugs and by gaining a comprehensive, clear and researched understanding of good nutrition and proper lifestyle choices.
There are a number of ways to achieve optimal health (without the use of harmful drugs) that seem to hold true for all people:
If medicine were to focus on these sensible (and often free) lifestyle changes, vast numbers of Americans would no longer need or want to purchase the drugs the pharmaceutical industry desperately wishes to continue to sell.
It is my hope to leverage all the past ten years of work on Mercola.com to provide you and the rest of the world with a treasure trove of knowledge and health wisdom that will allow you to avoid the traps of dangerous drugs and unnecessary surgery.
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AA