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CALIFORNIA, November 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A San Francisco surgeon is undergoing trial for allegedly hastening the death of a terminally ill patient to harvest his vital organs. The case against Hootan Roozrokh is believed to be the first of its kind brought against an American transplant surgeon.Rosa Navarro, the patient’s mother, successfully filed suit against the hospital where the patient died and received $250,000 in compensation. Now the District Attorney’s office is pressing charges against the 34-year-old surgeon for “dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose.”Roozrokh is also being charged...

Two former Philadelphia funeral directors on Tuesday admitted to selling cadavers to a ring that cut them up and sold the body parts to hospitals for implants. Gerald Garzone and his brother Louis Garzone pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired with others to take bones, skin and organs from 244 bodies in their funeral homes between February 2004 and September 2005. They were part of a scheme that plundered 1,077 bodies in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania without the permission of relatives in an operation that netted the conspirators $3.8 million. One of the bodies belonged to Alistair...

Over 1,300 Kosovo Serbs, in addition to those for whom we know they have been killed and whose remains were handed over to their families by the UNMIK during the past 8 years, are still listed as missing. In some cases the entire families were kidnapped by the KLA/UCK at some point during the 1998-1999 war and after UN/NATO took over the administration and security of the southern Serbian province. These people were taken away in an unknown direction and, for all we know, disappeared from the face of the earth. Over the years, we have learned that a number...

Belgrade, 8 April Belgrade, 8 April (AKI) – Swiss authorities banned former chief prosecutor at the UN's Hague-based Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, from presenting on Tuesday her recently published autobiography in her hometown of Lugano, according to media reports. The Swiss federal department of foreign affairs also banned Del Ponte (photo) from presenting the newly published Italian translation of her book 'The Hunt' to journalists and the public in a bookshop in the northern city of Milan on Monday. "Carla del Ponte's book on her work as chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal contains statements which are...

One Bulgarian doctor has been arrested for suspected involvement in human organs trafficking, Sofia's Police announced today. According to the same source, the arrested is Stanislav Hristov, the Head of the Pathology Department at the Aleksandrovska Hospital in Sofia. He has been charged with multiple violations of the regulations on human organs handling and transplantation for personal gain. The Public Prosecution Office requested the doctor to be ordered a temporary detention. When asked by Bgnes Agency to comment the case, the Director of the Sofia's Hospital, Assistant Professor Asen Zlatev, said that he would like to see the results of...

A former funeral parlor owner and embalmer accused in a plot to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants has been granted a separate trial because he needs more time to recover from a serious head injury, prosecutors said Monday. Joseph Nicelli has been rehabilitating since suffering the injury in January by falling off a roof, but has not made enough progress to appear at an upcoming trial with three co-defendants. The trial is expected to begin sometime early next year in Brooklyn. The four men were charged last year with removing skin, bone and other parts from...

Health authorities are setting clinical criteria on brain death to facilitate human organ transplants, a senior official said Wednesday. A panel of medical and ethical experts have been convened to define brain death and associated clinical rules, Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, revealed. "But it's still early to make legislation," Mao told a regular press conference, apparently contradicting recent media reports that a law on brain death is being framed. Huang Jiefu, vice-minister of health and a liver transplant specialist, earlier told the China Organ Transplant forum that the definition of brain death is key to legislation....

Could local Falun Gong allegations of organ harvesting become a thorn in Beijing's Olympic crown? When Jeff Kline's mother was diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer in 2003, doctors told her there was nothing they could do. There wasn't time for conventional treatments, and her age and type of cancer made her ineligible for a transplant. At 59, with no hope of getting a new liver, she was given less than two months to live. But in the course of his work developing Web sites for nonprofits in Philadelphia, Kline came across a human-rights organization that described allegations of organ harvesting...

Hon David Kilgour and David Matas will be in Wellington Tuesday 11 September to highlight new evidence from their painstaking research into the practice of state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China. The former Canadian MP and the human rights lawyer have spent a year and a half researching and travelling in a global mission to raise awareness of the practice they conclude is "a form of evil yet to be seen on this planet." Kilgour and Matas released Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China in January this year. The report almost doubles...

Mainland China's well known media Southern Weekly , published a front page article titled "China Puts A Stop on 'Organ Transplant Tourism'" on July 19, 2007. The article reported on the recent restrictions imposed on organ transplants performed on foreigners by Chinese hospitals, and exposed the inside story behind these organ transplants in Mainland China, which are performed under the rule of the Communist Party. A Very Profitable Business Organ transplants skyrocketed after 1999 and hospitals reaped huge profits. The Southern Weekly mentioned that "liver transplants increased at a shocking rate: in 1999 only 24 liver transplants were performed; in...

(HONG KONG)--Paul Lee got his liver from an executed Chinese prisoner; Karam in Egypt bought a kidney for his sister for $5,300; in Istanbul Hakan is holding out for $30,700 for one of his kidneys. They are not so unusual: a dire shortage of donated organs in rich countries is sending foreigners with end-stage illnesses to poorer places like China, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines to buy a new lease of life. Lee, a 53-year-old chief subway technician in Hong Kong, was diagnosed with liver cancer in January 2005 but doctors denied him a transplant because they feared...

A San Francisco transplant surgeon was criminally charged today with allegedly attempting to hasten the death last year of a 26-year-old disabled man on life support in order to harvest his organs more quickly. The charges are the first in the nation against a physician for his role in a transplant and are sure to raise further uneasiness about a somewhat controversial practice in which organs are retrieved 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 an unlawful controlled substance...

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...

With the Olympics in Beijing just 500 days away, China has begun cleaning up organ trafficking practices. Not only have exports been banned, but with fewer prisoner executions, a major source of organs has dried up. The result has been a kidney shortage in South Korea. The preparations, it is said, are far ahead of schedule. With 500 days to go before the Olympic flame is lit in Beijing for the 2008 Games, construction of 31 venues in the Chinese capital is "progressing at a tremendous pace," International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge said this week. Even the new medal...

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered. Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about."

A Dutch reality television show in which a terminally ill woman is to select one of three contestants to receive her kidneys when she dies is to air this week despite criticism that it pushes the boundaries of the format too far.The government has called for De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor show) to be dropped because it is "unethical" and "wretched" but the broadcaster BNN said it would go ahead to highlight the difficulties of searching for kidney donors. In the show, due to be broadcast on Friday, a woman identified only as Lisa, 37, will select a recipient...

TORONTO—"This is a Holocaust, no question about it," Toronto-based family doctor Gerry Koffman told an audience gathered in the University of Toronto's Medical Science Building on Thursday. Dr. Koffman is the Canadian co-ordinator for Doctors Against Organ Harvesting, a U.S.-based group of medical doctors that is warning the public and the medical community that there are serious ethical implications in receiving organ transplants in China. Thursday's forum discussed recent reports of widespread forced organ removal from living prisoners of conscience in that country. Based on its own independent investigations and a report by Canadians David Kilgour and David Matas, Doctors...

Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% human 25.03.07   Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.  Chimera: sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells  He...

Team says China harvests Falun Gong organs Thu Jul 6, 3:34 PM ET A respected Canadian human rights lawyer and a former Canadian cabinet member lent their weight on Thursday to charges that China has been killing Falun Gong dissidents so it can use their organs. The two men -- lawyer David Matas, and David Kilgour, former secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific -- spent two months investigating the accusations, which China has regularly denied. "It is simply inescapable that this is going on," Kilgour told reporters as he and Matas released their findings. They provided transcripts of...

After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait. Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China's thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported. "Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said Tuesday, according to a...

This morning, I renewed my driver's license. Of course, on the application they asked me if I wanted to donate my organs in the eventuality of my death. Being an altruist by nature, my first reaction was, why not, it could help somebody. But then a fear crept into my head - what if I was seriously ill, and "they" decided to hasten my as of yet not-inevitable death to harvest my organs? While my first reaction was that is absurd, I decided to chose "no" given the well grounded fear that in today's society, where life is given no...

At Wal-Mart's 1992 general meeting, founder Sam Walton asked shareholders to sing God Bless America. The 15,000 Wal-Martians responded to Sam's call - even though Walton had been dead for two months. Walton's request to the shareholder-cum-revival meeting in rural Arkansas - channelled through a spotlit executive crouching on bended knee to speak to the departed Deity of Retail - was scarcely surprising. Wal-Mart is America's most patriotic, flag-waving company. But look under the flags. Stores are decked out like a war rally. Stars and Stripes hang from the ceiling. Cardboard eagles shriek 'Buy America!' But one independent group sampled...

NEWARK, June 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In some jurisdictions the effort to produce more organs for transplant patients is being aided by plans to “streamline” the medical criteria for “brain death” so that organs can be harvested from patients who are still breathing and have a heartbeat. The New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners wants to change the rules to allow just one physician to declare brain death. In addition, the rule that currently requires at least one of the two required physicians declaring “brain death” to be a neurologist or neurosurgeon would also be eliminated. The New Jersey...

Chinese Military Doctor Witness to over 60,000 “Involuntary” Organ Donations – most from Falun Gong Organs extracted from live people and people who survive are cremated alive By Terry Vanderheyden SHENYANG, May 3, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – China's 30 years of brutal, forced abortion to implement its one-child policy and its subsequent devaluing of human life has led has led to a new atrocity. A Chinese military doctor has revealed that he has personally encountered falsified documents for over 60,000 detainees – many of them members of the Falun Gong religion – which falsely claim that the individual named is voluntarily...

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) Two Japanese nationals in their 50s received heart transplants between 2001 and 2004 at a Shanghai hospital whose organs mainly come from death-row inmates, sources at a Taiwanese company that arranged the procedures said Thursday. Japan was seemingly unaware of the cases, as a survey released March 9 by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said there were no cases of Japanese receiving heart transplants in Asia outside of Japan. Ethical and medical concerns have often been raised regarding organ transplants in China over issues that include the use of organs of prisoners on death row and uncertain...

The head of a New Jersey biomedical firm has been charged in a plot to steal tissue from cadavers at New York City funeral homes and sell it for transplants nationwide, a law enforcement official said Wednesday. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes was expected to announce indictments on Thursday alleging that Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services, of Fort Lee, N.J., ran an illicit body parts ring, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the indictments still were sealed. Three co-conspirators also will be charged, the official said. The district attorney's office declined comment. A call...

CHICAGO -- Every year more than 1 million Americans have medical procedures that use bone or other tissue from a cadaver -- like disk replacements or dental implants. But what if the donated tissue came from someone who died of cancer? Or AIDS? Or hepatitis? That worry caused by a ghoulish scandal in the body parts business has led to distress for hundreds of people, and some prospective patients are now reconsidering how they want their surgeries done. Experts familiar with the situation say patients' chances of getting a disease from the suspect tissue are small, but doctors are urging...

Calling it a danger to public heath, the Food and Drug Administration shut down a biomedical firm on Friday amid allegations the company covertly harvested human tissue for profit at funeral homes in the New York city area and elsewhere. The FDA sanction against Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., was the latest development in a brewing scandal involving scores of funeral homes and hundreds of looted bodies, including that of "Masterpiece Theater" host Alistair Cooke. Federal and local authorities have been investigating whether the firm's chief executive, Michael Mastromarino, and a business associate paid off funeral homes so...

When it comes to the body, they say you can't take it with you when you die. But they didn't say it should be sold from the back of a truck. Or that you should not have the right to give a fully informed consent for whatever it is that medical science wants to do with your remains. Recently it was revealed that a group of criminals was stealing bones from bodies at crematoriums in New York. They were then sold to for-profit tissue banks in New Jersey and Florida. Among the victims was the late host of PBS television's...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The bones of the late British broadcaster Alistair Cooke were stolen by a crime ring that snatched body parts to sell for transplant procedures, according to reports in two New York newspapers Thursday. Citing sources close to an investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney's office, the Daily News said Cooke's bones were snatched before his cremation and sold for more than $7,000 to two tissue processing companies. It quoted Cooke's daughter, Susan, as saying she had learned of the theft last week and was shocked and saddened by it. A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's...

Stolen Human Tissue Stolen human tissue ends up in several mountain patients who went into the hospital for surgery. The material was stolen from funeral homes in New York that removed bone and tissue from corpses without getting permission from families. Now hospitals around the state are looking into whether any of their patients got the stolen tissue. Officials at Mission Hospitals say 16 patients may have received some of the stolen tissue. They believe that although the tissue may have been stolen it was still sterilized and tested for infectious diseases. Mission Hospitals' Dr. Dale Fell says patients were...

New questions were raised yesterday over France's pioneering face transplant operation when a leading medical ethics professor said the surgery had been conducted with undue haste, as it emerged that both the donor and the recipient of the skin graft had attempted suicide. The medical team that carried out the 15-hour operation eight days ago was accused of ignoring ethical questions in the bid to be first, and of using a rival doctor's technique. The saga took a further twist when it became clear that the donor and the 38-year-old transplant patient had been involved in suicide attempts.

She was mauled by a pet Labrador in May, leaving her with severe facial injuries that her doctors said made it difficult for her to speak and eat. The dog was put down. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051205/ap_on_he_me/face_transplant_10

MARLY, France - The French doctor behind the world's first partial face transplant insisted Monday that his patient had not tried to commit suicide before she was maimed by her dog _ although a British newspaper said she had acknowledged it in an interview. The contradiction is one of the mysteries surrounding last week's groundbreaking operation that grafted a nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor onto the severely disfigured 38-year-old mother of two teenagers. The headline-grabbing case raised questions about the ethics of performing such a dramatic operation on someone who may have suffered psychological troubles. London's Sunday...

Harvesting Fetal Body Parts By Kelly Patricia O'Meara [Reprinted with permission of Insight. Copyright 1999 New World Communication, Inc. All rights reserved.] The distribution of fetal body parts to scientists is a million-dollar industry. Researchers claim it's a necessary evil, but others fear it may encourage some grim abuses. Scientists depend on human body parts for research they believe may yield breakthroughs in a number of diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, that affect millions of people. But the public largely is unaware of the way the laundry list of body parts for scientific research is filled. Those who oppose...

THE market in body tissue in the US is believed to be worth more than $500 million (£288 million) a year. (snip) Heart valves are said to fetch up to $7,000 each in the US, and skin $1,000 per square foot. A body could be worth about $150,000, according to Art Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. (snip) In some cases people in charge of willed-body programmes have profited illegally. In 2002 Allen Tyler, the head of the cadaver programme at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, pleaded guilty to 66 counts of illegal mutilation....

Michael Bruno's life story was uncomplicated: He was an immigrant who worked hard, spoke his mind and succumbed to cancer two years ago at 75. "Typical Italian cab driver,'' recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything.'' But a recent investigation has uncovered a ghoulish side to Bruno's death. Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people -- including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke -- were secretly carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin and tendons without their families' permission. Authorities allege the body parts were...