Four Doctors Charged with Illegal Organ Transplantation Acquitted

By Staff

November 2, 2005

(AXcess News) Moscow - Four doctors who were charged with illegal organ transplantation in Russia were acquitted by a Moscow City Court due to a lack of incriminating evidence, a Russian news web site reported.

The court first acquitted the doctors in March 2005 but the Supreme Court cancelled the sentence and ordered a retrial.

The physicians of the 20th Moscow hospital were accused of having taken organs from a patient who was alive at the time. The court said on Wednesday it found that according to the conclusion made by experts, the patient died in the resuscitation department. The court determined that the physicians had started to prepare the operation to remove the organs after they ascertained the patient's death.

The prosecutors demanded that the physicians be sentenced to three to six years in prison. During the first trial, they had demanded eight to nine years. They asked the court to qualify the charge as not premeditated murder but intentional grievous bodily harm.

The patient was taken to the hospital in the spring of 2003 with a head injury. Doctors restarted his heart twice, the third attempt was unsuccessful, so they passed his body over to transplant specialists who were later charged with murder.

Policemen burst into the operating room as the transplant doctors were about to remove the patient's kidneys. The policemen attempted to resuscitate the patient with artificial respiration and indirect heart massage claiming he was still alive. The patient's death had not been documented.

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This article posted Novembere 23, 2005.