The oft-rumored scandal that has dogged the organ-transplant community since its inception – the false, but feared horror that has been denied, again and again, by those who struggle to use such a terribly limited supply of material to save such desperate patients – has finally taken place for real. What the public has often feared, and was told over and over didn’t happen and couldn’t happen, has happened. A patient on the liver-transplant waiting list at St.Vincent Hospital in Los Angeles was bumped over 50 places on the needs-ranking list to receive an organ that should have gone to another patient. The transplant-service staff then engaged in extensive falsification of medical records to hide the procedure. In the end, not only was one patient denied the organ that should have gone to them, but another patient was removed from the transplant list entirely and their identity used to hide the identity of the actual – unentitled – recipient. Naturally, the whole thing was paid for by the Saudi government: a premium fee of $340,000 to the hospital, undisclosed sums to the surgeons, and who knows what else to grease the skids.

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