This story horrifies and disgusts me. Who do these people think they are? Health should never be about money, the haves and the have nots... i could say more but why bother. I pray for the boy's soul and for his mom.

This story touches many painful chords. This patient (Ruben Navarro-and his mother are members of a minority and without a lot of money. She didn't have the money or resources to stay with her son to ensure that his right to life was not abused. What I see very plainly here is the blatant disrespect that many in the medical community have for the rights/lives of minorities to say "NO! I choose NOT to be an organ donor!"

Yes, there is fear and mis-perception about the need for donated organs and the lack of donors...but now you may know WHY many minorities choose NOT be organ donors...for exactly what I am watching on TV right now. I am angered but not surprised that the harvest took place ANYWAY...many people of color truly fear that the lack of respect for their (OUR) lives will allow such things to continue. How many more lives of people of color have been 'taken' (or have been ALLOWED to die) in the name of organ harvesting.

Unfortunately, this country has a history of disrespecting the lives of people of color (Tuskegee Syphilis Study) known and unknown,and it's unfortunate that this doctor had to be made the scapegoat.

My prayers are with Ruben and his mother, as well as for those who choose to play God.

I apologize that I posted my previous comment prior to watching the outcome. I acknowledge the fact that Ruben's organs were NOT harvested, but why was he not re-ventilated? Who gave the DNR order? Certainly not his mother...I still see disrespect for Ruben's life, and my heart hurts for his mother, Rosa.

None of you understood the medical details of this case so you shouldnt judge based on the emtions, i really think the doctor did exactly what most doctors will do in that situation.And as his attorney said I can assure you if the doctor's name was John smith you would have not seen that case at all.

I just finished watching this program and I am sickend beyond belief. I have been a Nursing Supervisor for more than 15 years at a medical center and the one thing that is blaring in this case is the missing medical records. Anyone in health care management knows that missing medical records are a sure sign of improper treatment of the patient. Shame on the health care system! Shame on the attorney defending this physician and shame on this surgeon.

Organ procurement saves lives and this process should have never been negated by such care. My thought is that the physician was in a hurry. This is why one should NEVER sign a DNR..EVER!!!! Health Care Proxy is much safer so that a trusted love one oversees your care.

Has anyone questioned why the hospital staff was not prepared for this type of organ harvest? Information regarding this procedure was not given to staff members until the procedure was booked and the harvest team had been called. The operating room staff and the ICU staff were not given proper time to review the policy and procedures prior to this young man coming to the operating room. I feel the people truly responsible for the confusion that brought on the unnecessary trial will never be held accountable for their actions.

The transplant system in this country as operated by the private government contractor, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and its affiliates, the Organ Procurement Organizations (OPO) such as the California Donor Network (CDN) is corrupt, unfair, and unethical. CDN makes more than $35 million annually selling organs 'donated' by people like Navarro who are duped into 'donating' by UNOS and the 57 other OPO across the country. CDN will tell you it is not legal for people in the US to sell or realize any meaningful compensation. That is true for you and I. It is not illegal for the OPO as stated in the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). As non-profits the OPO are allowed to sell organs under the law. The reason Ruben Navarro was pushed towards death was so CDN could collect upwards of $200,000.00 by selling his ORGANS. In the end Ruben died, no one got an organ, Roozrohk was prosecuted and found innocent. The hospital and Roozrohk paid money to walk away. This story is merely the tip of the iceberg. I have researched UNOS/OPTN/OPO for the past 5 years. The transplant system in this country is a criminal enterprise.

I am a kidney transplant recipient and grateful. I am tired of seeing thousands of people in this country dying while waiting on the National Transplant Waiting Death List.

Go to www.innovativestrategies.us for my revelations.

This is certainly a difficult situation, but there are other views to be considered. Dr. Roozrokh was found not guilty by 12 of his peers. Rueben's mother withdrew her lawsuit and the lawyer issued an apology to Dr. Roozrokh. Rueben's organs were not harvested. Until you work with dying patients, comatose patients and their families who love them, you cannot understand both sides of this issue. Organ donations are critical and desperately needed. Medical technology has allowed dying patients to live longer than ever before in history. Their lives are prolonged not for the patient, but for the family who cannot accept their impending death. I have seen people on vents being kept alive without any brain function. Why do families put their loved ones through this? I don't know anyone (and I have spoke to many people about this issue), who would want to be kept alive by a machine if there is no brain function. To lay there and have their famililes see them like that? The patient would not want it, but some families do. Removing a patient from life support when the rest of the body is dying is the compassionate thing to do. We will ALL die someday and if I can possibly bring life to someone else through my death, then I have done the ulitimate in paying it forward. My life will continue through my organ donation and the hope it can give to a person who might need my organs to live. I hope and pray organ donation has not been hurt by the sensationalized media. I also hope and pray that Dr. Roozrokh can continue to save lives through organ donation. Whatever your beliefs are, make a living will, elect someone to be your power-of-attorney for health care, whatever your state calls it. They are advanced directives and everyone, no matter how old you are, should have them. And most importantly, become an organ donor, your organs don't do any good in the ground.

My heart bleeds for this coragous mother that fought for her son. I had a similar, but different ending, situation with my daughter. rebeccaofsouthridge.org/ Despite successfuly coming off a vent I was asked to let my little girl "go" for the good of the family. By letting go the neurologists were asking me to withhold neutrition from my daughter until she died. They further told me that she wouldn't suffer and that there was a team that could come in and further discuss the situation with me. I'm sure that it was an organ transport team. I was appalled and fortunately had the ability to refuse. My little girl , thanks to hyperbarics, is making great strides forward as can be seen on her web site.

While I appreciate the sad horror stories you aired tonight, most Americans will just say that that will probably never happen to them and just blame the insurance industry, and go back to being complacent about health care in the US. Too bad you didn't pick someone like me with no huge deadly diseases but a lot of allergies, asthma and arthritis. I pay over $10,000 out of pocket each year, largely on obscenely overpriced RX drugs. I travel to Europe a lot and always check on the prices there. Usually at least 1/2 less, often more.You should have checked in various countries around the workd to see what their nationalized health plans would have paid for my medical upkeep. That would have been an eye-opener, a good argument for health care reform, and something everyone could relate to. YOu may use me as a test case. America will never have health care reform that means anything until limits are put on what the big drug companies and other health care providers are allowed to charge. Tell that story.

Unfortunately most comments so far are from people who do not know anything about medicine. It is dangerous to have a little knowledge such as the nursing supervisor above. As a surgeon I know that Dr. Hootan had done his job ethically. He was singled out because of a prejudiced nurse (as noted by her comments in the police video) who do not know anything about transplant surgery or about the detail history of this patient. Obviously this small hospital had no business of doing organ harvesting and Dr. Hootan was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He did not go there seeking the organs for his own financial benefits since he was not involved with the recipient transplant team. He went there because he was asked and his obligation as a doctor to try and save a life. To put this gifted surgeon on trial is an injustice that can never be corrected. The national media and the prosecutor should now be put on trial. It took Dr. Hootan 4 yrs of medical school, 5 years of general surgery residency, and 2-3 years of transplant surgery residency to get to where he was and literally 1 minute for the media and prejudiced people to erase. He unfortunately may never get his good name back (remember Richard Joules in the Atlanta olympic bombing) even if he has an outstanding career for the next 30 years. I wish Dr. Hootan the best and keep doing what God had gifted you to do because God in the end will no doubt judge you with high regards.

This upsets me as a mother of a 22 year old  and an RN for 25 years. I know the need for organ transplants is great .  When I was working I  talked to the people at a Donor center many times and worked with families .  I don't see  how if a patient  is not brain dead    their organs can be harvested.   The mother didn't understand all she was told.   It seems anyone coming in to ER as trauma could become a donor brain dead or not.   And that scares me. 

Terrifying story.

Four pertinent questions never answered (1) most obviously, why did anyone presume that the patient was going to die that night and call in a harvesting doctor? (2) if the harvesting doctor knew nothing of this patient, he would not have known that the amount of morphine and ativan he administered would not kill the patient---i.e. is it true that the amount administered would kill most people of the patient's size/weight? (3) did anyone ever produce the consent papers for this "donation" that the mother says she never signed---if not, why wasn't this considered an illegal 'harvesting attempt'? (4) when the patient died the next morning, why wasn't an autopsy done to determine the cause of death---such as drug overdose. I believe the doctor was tried on the wrong charges---how about attempted murder?

When the harvesting doctor stated that "most people don't understand what we (as transplant doctors) do" he definitely said a mouthful. Thanks for making this picture a little clearer----I'll be taking my organs to the grave with me.

What a sad commentary. I can't figure out who I am angriest with and with whom I have the most sympathy. Shame on the media who seem to feel that by using the word "allegedly" they can absolve themselves from being held responsible for ruining a man's life by tainting possible jury pools and swaying public opinion before all the facts have been presented in a court of law. Freedom of the press seems to out weigh the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Walter Cronkite where are you! The facts laid out by the Dateline report, while commendable, is tantamount to having false accusations printed on the front page of the newspaper and the retraction buried in the obituaries. At the very least the networks owe Dr. Hootan's acquittal the same amount of air time they gave him when they were reporting his 'alleged" crime. Unfortunately his innocence won't garner ratings and would expose the networks shoddy reporting techniques. The only thing missing the Dateline piece were interviews with the network guys who make the decisions on what they report to their audiences. But I am sure spending media time talking about how the media "got it wrong" is only something they can dish out but not take. As for Ruben and his mother, his mother said it best. He died without dignity and neither were given respect. My heart breaks for her. Hats off to the jury, (even though there were no doctors on the jury: hardly a jury of peers,) who had the common sense to ask about the the transplant coordinator's absence. Dr. Hootan's lawyer got it right, prejudice and racial profiling was an obvious factor.

Thank you Dateline for airing this story. Followups of sensational organ stealing misinformation reported in the media were nonexistant, until now. This is a first. I'm not expecting CNN of followup their breathless broadcasts of friend of a friend stories in the wake of the arrest of the supposed Brooklyne "broker" last summer. One would have expected many more arrests and stories of the uncovered "black market", but after 6 months, nothing.

The real criminals in this story are the dimwit nurse Jennifer Endsley, who went to the police 4 months (!) after the incident, and the prosecutor. The police did their job by reporting it to prosecutors, but Deputy District Attorney Karen Gray (also an apparent dimwit) decided to prosecute this great doctor - I hope the doctor can sue her.

The idiot, and apparent bigot & racist, Jennifer Endsley said on two different occasions that Dr. Roozrokh had a thick accent - He grew up in Wisconsin and doesn't have any accent at all. What a dip@!$%#.

These two dolts couldn't have done more to sabotage the organ donation program in this country, and THEY should be brought up on charges. As reported in the story, organ donations have decreased, for the first time ever, after this incident. I wonder how many deaths you are responsible for JENNIFER ENDSLEY. After the harm you've caused, please, get out of nursing before you do any more grand scale harm to mankind. And the stories on the internet about Dr. Roozrokh being a Muslim committing Jihad, my GOD, I'm embarrassed to belong to the same species as some of you turds.

Awesome of Dateline to bring this story to light. Please educate yourself and become an organ donor. There is no logical reason not to.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/07/california.transplant.indictment/index.html

See link above: Another "do not harm" good doctor caught mining the 'near dead.' The spin on the Dateline story made it appear the doctor was grossly mischarged but this was not really as clear as the doc and his attorney want you to believe. The attorney said it himself: There has never been a case where the doctor was accused of hurrying the death of a patient for the organs. The fact is that overdoses are given all the time. The nurse who refused to be interviewed and the missing records tell the tale. It appears more than chance the records disappeared and the nurse wasn't forced to testify. She said the doctor was not 'responsible' but the story doesn't end there. Was she paid not to testify? Why wasn't she subpoenaed? It isn't usually a doctor who gives the injections or IVs. It is usually nurses that actually do the work under instructions from doctors. But the log disappeared, right? Often there are multiple injections given following shifts changes. Did the good doc take a lie detector test to prove his innocence. Did he testify himself? Sounded like the jury didn't have enough to nail him but that doesn't mean he's innocent. Having witnessed aftermath of a cardiac arrest, which occurred as a result of overdoses, subsequent overdosing with crisis intervention, then discovering the record had been purged from the chart, I am not in the least surprised.

That Mother and attorney dismissed their case, leaving a smell like that of a pay-off. Sounds like the doc organ harvester got caught and had to hire Robert Blake's attorney to get him off. That must have cost mega bucks. Dateline you were taken or was it your intent to whitewash an industry that increasingly fails to police their own bad apples. So are we still waiting for the first doctor conviction?

The other solution is for the hospitals to go ahead and give the care needed and they should fight for payment from the insurance companies. They usually have more ways than individual families to get reimbursed.

My son was declared braindead on Sept. 26, 2009 following his collapse after a cross country running race. He was a 17 year old who had designated on his California ID to be an organ donar. They called all the time just prior to his death and for days after. For all intents and purposes, I wanted to see his organs go to help save another. The organ donar people were very nice and talked very professionally. I figured I was getting accurate information. During our meeting, one of my sons doctors called them out to confer with the organ donar people. Later, my sons doctors appologized profusely about what just took place. Come to find out the organ donar people were to advise me that they appreciated my sons donation desires, but that they had to refuse because he had an unknown virus. The doctors explained to me that because he had an undiagnosed virus that attacked his heart, that it would be unsafe for the recipient. I understood. While I would have liked to have known he lived in someone else, it was not meant to be. The organ donar people had no intentions of ever advising me. I wonder if they were ever going to tell anyone they were harvesting tainted organs. That seriously disturbs me.

I feel it is a good thing. I to am an organ donar, but I would hope that people were getting healthy organs. It is disturbing to know this may not be the case.

The poor it seems are worth more dead than alive.

What I don't get as a Home Health Care giver is that not one of these people could ever have a promiss of quality of life!! family makes this hard for them here! As hard as it is to say goodbye to someone so important in my life and God knows I've had my share. I beg my love ones to please never leave me in any of those states that we just saw!! Not The Boy ! Not The Fire Fighter! Or the son and new father!! Not for me! I would hope my family would let me go!! I love life and I have made it though the worst cancer so I made up my mind along time ago. Quality not quantity.

It seems San Luis Obispo bit off more than it can chew, as they are known to do quite frequently. Why would any educated prosecutor in their right mind bring such a case as this one to trial? Missing records and NO "quarterback player" interviewed or even supeoned? Between Santa Barbara County and their trial against Michael Jackson and San Luis Obispo's trial against Dr Roozrokh, I a not proud to be a citizen here, and quite frankly a little frightened. Let me remind you Californians, that we paid for this young mans medical care when we pay our taxes. Smelling a pay-off is an understatement! Dr Roozrokh should sue San Luis Obispo County for malicious prosecution.

I wish Dr Roozrkh the best, and hope this hurts San Luis Obispos tourism as inept prosecutors in Santa Barbara County did to Santa Marias.

I'm an O.R. Nurse & we do organ harvest @ my hospital. It seems to me that the doctor did follow protocol but what's confusing about this matter is the patient should have been monitored by an Anesthesiologist who is responsible for monitoring his airway, heart and labs, if indicated. The Anesthesiologist does not terminate his involvement in the care of the patient until the patient's is cross clamp, major vessels cannulated and all their blood drained from their body. Monitors are turned off @ that time and the Anesthesia person leaves the room and the organs are removed. Bringing patients to the O.R. for organ harvest when they are not brain dead has now become more common than Dateline indicated. My hospital does them. In fact we did two in a 24 hour time period a few days ago. Both patients were not brain dead but were determined to have serious brain injuries that left them comatose, prognosis grave, not expected to live and dependent on life support, but not brain dead. These patients are brought into the O.R., placed on the O.R. table, prepped and draped. Most O.R.'s will turn the lights low and keep the room quite. Then they will remove the patient from the ventilator and await the patient's heart to stop while the surgical team is scrubbed ready to cut once pronounced. If the patient's heart does not stop after waiting one hour, the patient is to be reconnected to life support, removed from the O.R. and taken back to their room. I am an advocate of organ donations but not this way. I think it's murder. It's very hard on the staff to witness this and many are not allowed to refuse participation. Also, if the family request, they are allowed to be in the O.R. with their family member until they're pronounce dead. Even harder to witness. So don't blame Dr. Hootan. Blame the apathy and immorality of our society that disregards the sanctity of Reuben Navarro's life (as well as many others) and decides when a person should die, out of God's hands and allows a hand full of people to decide who should live and who should die.

I have many questions regarding this case. How did he have a massive heart attack at such a young age? Why did his Doctor just take off for the weekend? What happened to to the Hippocratic Oath that Doctors take or just like Michael Jackson being shoved into an ambulance and the Doctor disappears. His Mother should not have been pressured to agree to the transplantation at a time when he was dying. That decision should have been made and if it wasn't then the decision was no transplantation. She should not have been pressured. The Nurse Endsley, should have gone through the channels in the Hospital rather then going to a detective right away. And Hospitals are staffed 24/7 with competent staff along with the fact that this Doctor brought his transplant team with him so they should have been well trained at what they do. This is a very sad case. Just because it is a weekend, doesn't mean the staff don't know what they are doing.

Someone paid the mother and her attorney to drop their civil suit or "go away." People don't let civil suits go away unless there is a settlement of some type. Remember this was a criminal prosecution. It stinks like old fish. I have no sympathy for the 'good' doctor. Did he testify? Lots of missing links here. Stop and think about why this story is being hyped on Dateline??? Are we looking at tort reform? Hmmm, maybe. You think this doctor got by with murder? Michael Jackson's doctor is still seeing patients as is Anna Nicole's doctors. How about the Pediatrician pedofile who molested 100s of children in a set up that should have alerted his staff or SOMEONE but a little kid had to tell on him. What about the lab technician that gave HIV to her patients in several hospitals. Like priests, they just keep moving around to other states. Don't forget the nutty Psychiatrist who killed all those people at Ft. Hood. His peers at Walter Reed knew about him too and shipped him out of there. What does it take to stop some of these vultures? Medical review boards doing nothing but sitting on their hands!