Sick: U.S. liver transplants for Japanese gang members
If you’re in Los Angeles waiting for an organ transplant and you’re a law-abiding American citizen, too bad for you.
When L.A. hospitals aren’t putting illegal aliens in the front of the line, they’re doling out scarce organs to Japanese criminals. For crying out loud. Via the LA Times:
UCLA Medical Center and its most accomplished liver surgeon provided a life-saving transplant to one of Japan’s most powerful gang bosses, law enforcement sources told The Times.
In addition, the surgeon performed liver transplants at UCLA on three other men who are now barred from entering the United States because of their criminal records or suspected affiliation with Japanese organized crime groups, said a knowledgeable law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The four surgeries were done between 2000 and 2004 at a time of pronounced organ scarcity. In each of those years, more than 100 patients died awaiting liver transplants in the Greater Los Angeles region.
The surgeon in each case was Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil, executive chairman of UCLA’s surgery department, according to another person familiar with the matter who also spoke on condition of anonymity. Busuttil is a world-renowned liver surgeon who co-edited a leading text on liver transplantation and is one of the highest-paid employees in the University of California system.
There is no evidence that UCLA or Busuttil knew at the time of the transplants that any of the patients had ties to Japanese gangs, commonly called yakuza. Both said in statements that they do not make moral judgments about patients and treat them based on their medical need.
U.S. transplant rules do not prohibit hospitals from performing transplants on either foreign patients or those with criminal histories.
The most prominent transplant recipient, Tadamasa Goto, had been barred from entering the U.S. because of his criminal history, several current and former law enforcement officials said. Goto leads a gang called the Goto-gumi, which experts describe as vindictive and at times brutal.
The FBI helped Goto obtain a visa to enter the United States in 2001 in exchange for leads on potentially illegal activity in this country by Japanese criminal gangs, said Jim Stern, retired chief of the FBI’s Asian criminal enterprise unit in Washington.
Goto got his liver, Stern said, but provided the bureau with little useful information on Japanese gangs.
“I don’t think Goto gave the bureau anything of significance,” Stern said. Goto “came to the States and got a liver and was laughing back to where he came from. . . . It defies logic.”
Despite these repeated injustices, health officials refuse to make law-abiding Americans a priority over foreign nationals seeking transplants, kidneys, hearts, or any other vital organs. This sums up the screwed-up system:
“If you want to destroy public support for organ donation on the part of Americans, you’d be hard pressed to think of a practice that would be better suited,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Where are all the health care reformers when you need them?
***
Ed Morrissey has extensive personal experience with the transplant system. His thoughts here.
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F.O.L.L.O.W.the M.O.N.E.Y.
What happened to the days when the feds hunted down gangsters and gunned them down in the streets?
Bring back Hoover, Purvis, and Ness, and plenty of ammo.
Every time I read an article about the feds holding more mandatory sensitivity training classes, the less this type of story surprises me.
I read this. The FBI had a hand in this nonsense.
Bring on socialized medicine! Woohoo! I can’t wait!
/sarc
Sorry, the only criteria to having a transplant should be “who is next”, i.e., in order of need. I disagree it should be decided on who the most “deserving”. That’s a corrupted system waiting to happen.
I know I’m aging myself wildly but any of you remember that actor/model named Jon Erik Hexum? I was a teenager when he accidently killed himself with what he thought was a fake gun. Anyway, his family donated his organs after his death. The guy that got his heart was a pimp (I’m not kidding) out of Reno, NV. His mother later said she realized she had no hand in picking who got her son’s organs but hoped it was someone who had a better line of work or something. But think about it, how often have we heard about celebs jumping the line as well although it is always claimed that was not the case.
Of course not, but it just seems wildly curious that’s all.
I agree with Mr. Caplan, stories like this are going to have many Americans thinking about that when we renew our dl’s (or change them such as in my case-just can’t give up that HI dl yet). You’d like to think that if you do die that someone who’s not a criminal or an illegal will get your organs-you’d like to think it’s a person who has a family to raise or someone who can get the opportunity to grow up or see for the first time. You don’t think about criminals and illegals who want yet another organ (wasn’t that guy on # 5 the last time we discussed this?) getting it.
Oh, before the liberals say something about the illegal with family etc. regarding organ donations-like everything else, they need to get in line. They can’t always be jumping the line. I know, you’ll say I’m mean and terrible and will rot in hell. Fine, whatever makes you people happy.
Donating the organs that other won’t dontate.
Seriously - if I were a family member of person who died because the organ was given to a foreign national - I’d be at the front of the line to sue the facility and the surgeon.
And socialized medicine is supposed to help us how exactly? It’ll make things like this common place.
Organs are extremely difficult to come by, but livers are at the top of the list for rarity. I encourage people to become organ donars upon death. This statement says it all:
If a government agency can manipulate healthcare at this level, just imagine socialized medicine with Obama or Hillary.
Your campaign donations will reflect the quality of your health care. Your party affiliation will be considered in the ‘life or death’ decision making process.
No thanks
hell, if Goto was treated like everyone else.. sounds like the problem would have solved itself..
need should dictate how it goes.. not political favors..
a quick aside.. My father-in-law received a kidney from his sister a while back..
He’s was in the marines and the toughest man I know..
and his donate kidney is starting to fail..
Are those crickets I hear?
un effing believeable!!
The Federal Bureau of Incompetents puts a foreign national gangster ahead of its own country’s citizens. Stories like this make me want to cancel my organ donation status on my driver’s license. Why should I pass on my slightly used organs when I pass on to the great beyond knowing now that the government can step in a push someone that doesn’t even belong in this country to the front of the line to receive the benefit from them. If they are doing this now just wait and see how wonderful life will be once we have government controlled medical care.
Here is a picture of this surgeon mutt
Do we have a big Japanese gang problem in this country?
Not that I know of. Maybe the FBI morons have been watching too many “Hawaii 5-0″ reruns.
Thats dumb foreigners can obtain organs in the U.S. while our own citizens who need them die by the hundred’s
Why is this not being corrected??
foreigners duping the FBI? Unfounded.
Yes, we were told we would need $100,000 cash UPFRONT if our baby ever needed a heart transplant… even with health insurance….
no money, no waiting list….
but then a month later….
the baby of an illegal alien was flown to California for a fully paid for heart transplant.
It is bass ackwards in this country ~ and my husband is a Gulf War Vet and a police officer.
This is actually Capitalist medicine, rather than socialized medicine.
It was private payments that got this bum to the top of the list.
I would expect (and hope) that the gang boss made a very large contribution to the hospital. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse.
It’s one hell of a note that the welfare of US citizens counts for nothing in so many areas. It’s crazy. What is the matter with these people making these decisions? This is insane!
Thank you Old Scout for pointing out the obvious. Socialized medicine would make this more common? Man, I’d love to here the reasoning behind that.
The FBI has a history of protecting the wrong people. Whitey Bulger, anyone?
Sure money went to pay for the operation… however, without government intervention would this recipient have gone to the world-renowned specialist? Do you think you would have? Money talks… there’s a shocker.
yeah. I’m not even mildly surprised.
Okay. Great! I mean it, too!
Too many “Organ donations” are murder to start with — never volunteer your organs, it is not perversely euphemistic “the gift of life”, it can easily be your own death warrant.
Outside of those parts we can part with while alive — such as a kidney, bone marrow, blood, partial parts of other organs — by and large organs need to come from *living* donors to be effective.
So hooray! We now see who a real organ receptor is, intentionally or unintentionally: A person willing to steal someone else’s life to lengthen or improve their own.
You are a selfish monster. Organ donation has saved the lives of thousands of people. Yeah, this time it saved a guy we don’t much care for, but think of all the people you’re hurting by being selfish.
There is no excuse to not be an organ donor. None.
If you want to know more about Yakuza, go to Tru TV.com. Just last night I read a lengthy story of their history. Yes they ARE here, they also hold seats of power in the gov. of Japan. They are very visible and very much accepted there. But how the vaunted FBI could get duped so easily is beyond me.
How can you refuse a guy like this?
Of course that is going to be said. If it was told he provided the FBI with a whole bunch of information, I don’t think liver disease would be an issue, when he is hanging upside down with a bag over his head getting pummeled with kicks.
hmmm….so the FBI got duped into sponsoring an operation for a Yakuza bigwig on the apparently false promise of more intelligence on Yakuza operations here in the states?
Who vets these guys?
Regarding #28….The idea that this might be intentional disinformation didn’t actually occur to me (must need more coffee—lol) but you’re right in pointing out this possibility.
How many US citizens have a DONOR CARD in their pockets?
My suggestion ;; TEAR IT UP!
Any patient with a criminal record - in any country - should be barred from receiving donor organs! These very precious organs should only go to law-abiding citizens.
Rusty, I understand this is a tough concept — you see the one “saved” and the one from who life was taken sure seemed pretty, well, dead.
Understandable. Still …
The one from whom life was taken? What!? If people were being killed or neglected for their organs, I doubt the waiting list wouldn’t be so long.
Furthermore, organs can last quite a while in a deceased person, so neglecting someone for their organs seems pretty useless, no?
I honestly think that anyone who isn’t an organ donor is a monster not worthy of any respect. It’s so easy and so harmless and the benefits are incredible. One dead body can save half a dozen lives. What a waste to bury them.
So sayeth the Pooper of the Park.
As the daughter of a kidney recipient, I’d like to thank everyone here who is a registered organ donor. Someone like you saved my dad — my hero’s — life.
The system is messed up — everything from situations like the one in the post, to a disproportionately low amount of people of color receiving desperately-needed organs. But the answer isn’t to not be an organ donor. It’s to a) become a donor, b) use your clout as a donor to insist the system is improved, c) get to know an organ recipient, or family member of an organ recipient, and see the effects of the most incredible gift one human being can give another.
Also — for people not sure if donation is appropriate for someone of their religion, check out this site that lists many religions and their positions on donation.
No wonder they come here for organs. Somebody’s making a lot of money from foreigners using donated US organs. Is this what the donors intended? These doctors can get rich selling their own organs if they want, but greed should play no part in who receives donated organs.
Coming from the monster who advocates the murder of an unborn child. The day is rich in irony.
If this guy was such a thug why didnt he just 86 one of his cronies and bring his liver? Like BYOB I think anyone wanting to use a US surgeon should BYOL!
Thanks again for crediting me.
To TheHeartOfItAll — I am happy your Dad lives. A transplant kidney such as the one your Dad received can come from the living who continue living — because we each come with two and can live with one.
Kidneys also seem to be a special kind of organ — one that keeps longer in a dead body. I’m no expert on that!
But I love life — just as you do, for you love your own and your Dads!
That love of life is why you should ask, you should consider well, WHERE an “organ” gets taken from. It is always from another person whose life we ALSO must hold dear.
Was that person *really* dead?
Despite the arguments — logical and scientific, even moral — for sureness that a living person is wholly dead, we do NOT know it so well. This is the real world where we are limited in spiritual awareness, even the most aware of us are like those who are almost totally blind as to how the soul and the body bind together and how and when they separate during a death.
It is clear from occassional news reports, and also personal experience for many of us, that great pressures on brought upon survivors at their most vulnerable time in order that they declare a loved one “gone”, so that the organs be harvested in a condition most suitable for transplant. That the process of decay and cell death not get far advanced, that the organ — especially those like hearts, lungs, livers — be fresh.
Those pressures can be presumed — for we are human, we have all sorts of competing emotions and desires, in addition to our corrective good senses. The pure light of moral wisdom which G-d granted each of us in our soul is hidden, and at times darkened near to cold black. Those who NEED the organs can be POTENT men and woman, willing to bring great forces to bear upon our advisors, upon those in the transplant process. That happened in this case. It surely happens all the time.
The drive to live is very strong!
Re the advisory site mentioned by ToTheHeartOfItAll:
It is interesting, but certainly not completely reliable. I only know for sure that it very much misrepresents the Jewish position. Why? Because the Jewish position varies on which Rabbi and rabbinic-type organization a Jew accepts. There are a variety of positions. But none, I would think, would be found to be as cavalier to give the bold and overreaching advice the “Transplant for Life” (http://www.transplantforlife.org/miracles/religion.html) site gives. Here’s a better starting point for the Jewish take on this serious matter: http://www.pjvoice.com/v14/14701organs.html
bvw — thank you for your crazytalk. I’m now well aware I shouldn’t even bother reading your comments since they make approximately 0 sense.
For anyone else who is interested, if you or a loved one receives an organ from another person, you don’t have to be reminded to think of the donor. You think about them every morning when you wake up and are thankful you can spend another day with your loved ones. You think about them during special times, like holidays and birthdays, but you also silently thank them during the times you used to take for granted — reading the newspaper together, or cooking dinner for one another.
We were lucky to receive a donation from a living donor, a friend of the family, and few people will ever understand how it felt to look into the eyes of the donor and his family and have everyone in the room know that no thank you would ever be enough for what was being done that day.
I assure you that recipients and their families think non-stop of the people who are so generous, either in life or after passing, as to save another person’s life.
Yes, call me crazy … but I think a person is most respectful, considerate and humane towards others when that person doesn’t treat that other person as some marvelous, blessed donor of the “gift of life” by having to die to do so!
In other words, TheHeartOfItAll, value the very life of that other person as much as your own. Value it for its OWN life, not your own. Be happy to allow a comatose person lying there, heart still beating, but on a breather and with no brain activity detected to continue to live. Not even for the *chance* that the sleeper will wake, but even just to allow the sleeper to sleep — even that sleep is a state of life. It is not crazy at all to so value the life of others as much as your own so as to be willing to forgo the chance to harvest that needed organ, but it can be very hard.
TheHeartOfItAll is that it is kind to pray that the other be given every chance to continue life, rather than watched over like a bird of carrion at the bedside of the very sick, the comatose, or the very injured, for some minimal set of signs by which we — those who are alive and lively and motivated by need for that near-living organ — can declare “Dead!”, dead as far as OUR purposes go.
I wouldn’t recommend this. You may not want to wait longer in line for a conscience transplant.
I know each has their own opinion, but I can not think of any reason to be an organ donor.
Why perpetuate the “GOD” mentality of our medical community? I personally believe that once the body goes, your time is over. Why prolong the inevitable? This period of existence (in my opinion) is merely a time to grow, learn, experience and make our own decisions between right/wrong or good/evil.
Most individuals who strongly promote organ donations fall into one of the following categories:
1. Fear of Death or disablement.
2. Selfish motivation to not lose a loved one.
3. Profit.
As far as the Foreign national criminal is concerned, the FBI should be called to task for letting an American citizen die in order to “risk” getting information. NO foreigner (whether here on a visa, work permit or illegally) should EVER receive assistance when that assistance guarantees the death of an American Citizen! Period! This also applies to the heinous, PR act of the heart transplant baby mentioned earlier.
Yeah, just take a look at these jerks…using a tragedy to save the life of four other people. Selfish, money-grubbing, fearful bastards, the lot of them.
Hey Rusty — it’s no honor when somebody had to be terminated — killed — to save to those lives.
Here’s a part of that article:
* * *
“Stephanie Falbo, a transplant nurse from the New Jersey Sharing Network, stood at the nurse’s station. Anytime there is a patient with no brain activity — whether a donor or not — the Sharing Network is summoned. Flipping through Jason’s medical chart, Falbo saw a copy of his license. She saw the little red heart.
“What’s this?” she asked one of the nurses.
“It means he was an organ donor,” the nurse explained. “In North Carolina, that’s how they identify a donor on their license.”
Falbo’s eyes began to water. “I was just blown away,” she says. “What an unbelievable decision that this young man made to sign his donor card. I couldn’t stop thinking about how brave he was.”
* * *
And now he’s very very dead. Really dead, no chance at all. The birds of carrion waited for that marker.
He had *blessedly* signed that donor card!
…though in what may be merely a coincidence, the surgeon also attached little fingers to all the gang members - fingers donated by other Japanese “family” members.
You will have to excuse this question Rusty, but is it normal for you to lash out with hate whenever someone has a different opinion? - just saying….. it would make it possible to have an honest exchange of ideas or an actually truthful debate if we could respond intelligently instead of with meaningless hateful remarks. Try not to take offense to this response, but “your not helping my children”.
Ha. I try to be as civil as possible save for a few issues. Organ donation is one of them. To bury your organs when you die when it could save four lives strikes me as monstrous.
Time is of the essence. If you don’t have a donor card, fewer organs are possible.
I only disagree because of a personal belief related to doctors and surgeries, otherwise you are correct if the argument is taken at face value and all thoughts of corruption and the “as we all know they exist”, greedy thieves are ignored.
I do not have any links, but I recall several news articles over the years where organs were being removed without permission from the “patient” or the immediately family. This is of a great concern.
So if the unscrupulous will remove organs from non-donors, then what is to stop them from prematurely harvesting your organs if you lapse into a coma (maybe not even by accident)?
I’ve had an organ donor designation on my drivers’ license for years. That said, I thought liberals were all for having choices over one’s own body and that there shouldn’t be any judgment when it comes to an individual’s moral decisions. Can’t somebody say “my body, my choice” and decide not to donate any organs? Or is that only applicable when getting rid of the inconveniences of “fun” with a 15-year-old chickiepie?
greenfairie - Duh… lefties only approve of ‘choice’ when it means killing a baby. And that of course, is not monsterous even for partial-birth abortion.
So let’s make sure we’ve got it…
Killing baby - Not monstrous
Choosing not to donate organs from your own body: Monstrous
Another scoop - will it go uncredited again?
I am arguing for choice. I am not arguing for mandatory organ donation. I am saying that those who don’t choose to donate organs are monsters. You can think the same of those who choose to get an abortion.
I have always believed in organ donation, and have told my family and checked it off on my drivers license. Why? Because if the only thing keeping me alive is a machine, and I have no brain activity, then I won’t be needing those body parts where I know I am going. Since I am assured of heaven by my faith in Jesus, maybe my organs can extend the life of someone else who hasn’t made that decision yet- and my gift will help to convince them to do so.
As to a criminal from another country tricking our system- can’t you create a binding living will stipulating that ONLY a fellow American who is a legal citizen of this country be eligible for a transplant from you? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
Isn’t it wonderful to believe that either (1) we somehow are perfect in detecting all signs of consciousness, without any doubt whatsoever. To *beleive* that any good 21at century medical specialist with a bevy of wonderful electronics and imaging equipment can determine precisely when the soul and the consciousness depart the mortal realm! What a great, magnificent, mighty belief that is!
Or (2) … How wonderful and pristine the faith in fellow humans it is to *beleive* that no specialist would ever misrepresent the level of knowing of the moment of death so as to get at the organs — my organs, your organs, dearest believer — while they were still “useful”, that is while they were still almost *vital*! How supremely pleasant and reaffirming it is to know that our medical specialists have no corruptions, no corruptibility, that they are beyond any taint of compromise!
Oh Mighty Day!
* * *
Oh Mighty Day!
The Messiah walks!
Ri-i-ight.
* * *
Your G-d, Our God, is not like that. This is a world of learning, not of dullard, idiotic, panglossian throwing ourselves like true believers before the next flower-bedecked, garlanded sweet-smelling juggernaut that rolls by, as if by that sacrifice of the Holy of Holies — a person’s own Life vouchsafed to him or her by G-d — we somehow improve the world.
Here it comes again — the parade of the faithful! Implore and pray do they before a god unknown — so sweet their sacrifice, accept this our offerings of OUR organs!
Rude — say these criers before the flowery wagon — are we who prize to keep what was vouchsafed us.
My G-d says those organs are His, not yours to so offer.
And even Shinto criminals know better, and value those organs. Which was, in a way, the *hidden* point of the story.
That’s why they came here to get ograns — because in Shinto Japan they cannot.
But in America, so some say — Anyone who doesn’t give up on life on someone else’s sayso, that being when the *magical* brain wave recorder shows a flat line — such a person is a “Monster”!
Count me with the monsters, then.
“Dead” man wakes and the vultures start carving him up for his organs:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2030781/posts