Thai Court To Hear Murder-For-Kidneys Case

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court is expected this week to hear the cases of three doctors and a hospital manager charged with conspiracy to murder patients for their kidneys, a public prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Public Prosecutor Charatana Phathanaphanich told Reuters his office planned to begin the prosecution's case against the four defendants at a criminal court on Thursday. An attempt last month failed after one of the four men failed to appear at the prosecutor's office.

"If all four defendants show up tomorrow at the public prosecutor's office, we will then take them to court on the same day," Charatana said.

The three doctors, from Vachiraprakarn Hospital in southeast Bangkok, have been charged with the deliberate killing in 1997 of two patients who were in coma but were not officially categorised as brain dead.

Two of the doctors and the hospital manager have also been charged with falsifying letters from relatives of the female patients consenting to kidney donations, he said.

Trade in human organs is illegal in Thailand, but some hospitals are known to bypass the law by transferring dying patients to other hospitals in return for payments.

If found guilty of murder, the doctors could face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The charge of document forgery carries a sentence of between six months and five years imprisonment.

The four defendants, contacted by Reuters on Wednesday, declined to comment but in the past they have denied the charges filed by police, which carried more severe penalties than charges filed by public prosecutors.

Brain Dead?

Thai law says usable organs can only be removed from dying people if they are diagnosed as brain dead.

Under criteria set by the Thai Medical Council, examinations must be carried out twice, six hours apart. A diagnosis must be reached by the consensus of three doctors, who must not be organ transplant practitioners.

Charatana said the diagnosis on the two patients, who suffered brain damage from road accidents, were illegal because only two doctors were present and one of them was a transplant doctor.

Some organ transplant experts say the Medical Council's criteria on brain death are impractical because organs can often no longer be used if they are transplanted long after a patient's death.

They say the controversial case has given organ transplants negative publicity, scaring away many doctors and potential organ donors.

"Organ transplant technology has become much more advanced than society or morality can take," an organ transplant doctor, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

"But many doctors don't want to put their hands on brain-dead patients after this controversy, even though we have a lot of brain-damaged patients from road accidents, who could potentially transfer their organs to those in need."

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This article posted April 27, 2002.