Two arrested for 'Purchasing kidney for transplant'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

October 1, 2006

A 59-year-old man who received a kidney for a transplant from a living donor at a hospital in Ehime Prefecture last year and his common-law wife were arrested Sunday on suspicion of giving a 59-year-old woman cash and a car as a reward for donating the organ, the police said.

The police also searched Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital in Uwajima, the house of the suspects and other locations in connection with the case.

The man and his wife are suspected of violating the Organ Transplant Law by brokering the trade of the kidney. These are the first arrests made in connection with the purchase of a body organ since the law came into effect in 1997.

Arrested were Suzuo Yamashita, a director of a fishery company, and Tomoko Matsushita, president of the firm. The police also will question the woman who donated the kidney and the hospital to determine whether they were aware of the alleged sale or purchase of the organ.

The Japan Society for Transplantation also plans to set up a committee to investigate the case.

According to the police, Yamashita, who suffered severe diabetes, received the woman's left kidney in a transplant at the hospital on Sept. 28, 2005. After the operation, Yamashita and Matsushita allegedly gave 300,000 yen in cash and a car worth 1.5 million yen to the woman, who runs a building rental business.

Yamashita reportedly admitted to investigators that he paid the money to the woman. However, he gave ambiguous explanations on where the kidney came from.

Matsushita reportedly admitted to the allegations.

Matsushita has known the woman for about 25 years and borrowed 2 million yen from her. Matsushita allegedly asked the woman to be the donor for his common-law husband several times since August 2005, promising she would repay the debt and an additional 3 million yen if the woman from Matsuyama donated her kidney.

Matsushita told the hospital she was Yamashita's wife and the donor was his sister-in-law.

The woman who donated the kidney contacted the police in February. She told them Matsushita did not pay the money she owed her, even though she had accepted Matsushita's request to be a donor. The police then began their investigation.

According to the guidelines by the Japan Society for Transplantation, only relatives of a recipient can be accepted as a living donor.

The guidelines also stipulate that if people who are not the recipient's relatives want to donate an organ, approval must be obtained from an ethics committee at the relevant hospital.

"The doctor who performed the operation said he had not known anything about the selling and buying of the kidney. We heard the kidney was donated by [Yamashita's] sister-in-law. But we didn't identify the donor," Hiromichi Sadashima, director of the hospital, said at a press conference.

The law, which outlines standards for determining brain death and procedures for organ transplants, stipulates that organ donors are not allowed to receive benefits, including money. Violators of the law can be sentenced to up to five years in prison or fined up to 5 million yen.

Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital opened in April 2004 and has departments including internal medicine, surgery, digestive organs and cardiovascular diseases. It has 300 beds.

Copyright © 2006 The Yomiuri Shimbun.

This article posted October 22, 2006.