"Black transplantologist" from Nizhnevartovsk: maybe the prosecutor's office still messed up?
In a recent interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta Head of the Organ Transplantation Department of the Russian Scientific Center of Surgery named after academician B.V. Petrovsky corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Sergey Gauthier spoke about this kind of horror stories as an impossible phenomenon - and about the dismemberment of living people "into organs", and even more so – about the use of "left" corpses for transplantation:
RG: Catch a homeless man in the alley, take his kidney from him...
GAUTHIER: Where? In the alley? Who would do that? Such arguments about the acquisition of donor organs do not stand up to any criticism. The donor organ must meet certain criteria. The donor himself must undergo a special examination. His organ should be evaluated. Any donor kidney received from a deceased person has a passport. The kidney goes to a medical institution where it will be used for transplantation, with a passport containing all the data about it. There is no way without it. Without this, the transplant loses its meaning.
RG: And if you take an organ from a corpse? How do cadaveric organs come to you?
Gauthier: There is a Moscow City organ donation center. There is a team of specialists who leave to examine a dying patient. A potential donor must be treated. A person dies from injury, a lot of blood loss. So in order for the organs to be used for transplantation later, this blood loss must be replenished, normal conditions for the organs must be created. To do this, there must be a very qualified rehabilitation service. Yes, brain death has already been established, it is no longer possible to save a person, but it is necessary to save his organs. Otherwise, they are not suitable for transplantation.
Horror stories about "black transplantologists" appear regularly in the media, but are rarely confirmed. In this case, doubt about the validity of suspicions is also caused by the fact that corpses arrive to forensic experts at best a day after death, when there can be no question of any transplant.
Nevertheless, we give the official message verbatim:
The Office of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation in the Ural Federal District conducted an investigation into the illegal seizure of organs of deceased people in the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of Nizhnevartovsk.
In April of this year, the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation in the Ural Federal District received an appeal from a resident of the Ulyanovsk region. The woman reported the fact of illegal removal of eyeballs from the corpse of her deceased brother to the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of the city of Nizhnevartovsk.
During the inspection conducted on the instructions of the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation in the Ural Federal District, Yuri Zolotov, it was found that the forensic medical expert of the city Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Nikolai Melnikov, systematically cut out organs from the corpses of citizens who entered the Bureau, in violation of the law, without notifying the relatives of the deceased about their actions during 2004-2006. A total of 94 such cases were identified during the audit. Then Melnikov supplied the seized organs to the district clinical hospital for subsequent use during operations.
Based on the results of this inspection, the Nizhnevartovsk Investigative Department of the District Department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation initiated a criminal case under part 1 of Article 286 (abuse of official authority) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The course of the investigation was taken under special control by Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District Yuri Zolotov.
Currently, Melnikov has been relieved of his previous position as a forensic medical expert.
The Prosecutor's office submitted a submission to the head of the Ugra Department of Internal Affairs, in which the question of bringing to justice officials guilty of violations was raised.
The Prosecutor of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug was instructed to solve the issue of disciplinary punishment of the prosecutor of the city of Nizhnevartovsk and his deputy, who did not ensure proper supervision of the activities of the police, based on the results of an internal audit.
We will wait for the end of the check and, most importantly, the message about its results. If the suspicions are confirmed, the noise will be such that no one will be able to hear it. Let's hope there won't be any noise. This can be considered a tacit refutation...
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru
22.05.2008