What timing……I googled transplant, gang, liver and the below news…….
Vince(1) …thoughts?
186 needy Americans died while some good doer schmucks livers went to gang members in Japan…do you think the dead person really wanted his/her liver to go to japan? To a notorious gang member???
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-ucla31-2008may31,0,7495360.story
Copied and pasted since link will die soon...
After livers, cash to UCLA
Japanese Goto received a life-saving liver transplant at UCLA Medical Center. Goto is one of Japan's most powerful gang bosses, which experts describe as vindictive and at times brutal. A Japanese mob boss and another man said to have gang ties each donated $100,000 after their transplants. The university said the gifts had absolutely no bearing on the surgeries.
By Charles Ornstein and John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
May 31, 2008 »
A powerful Japanese gang boss who received a liver transplant at UCLA Medical Center donated $100,000 to the Westwood hospital shortly after the surgery, The Times has learned.
A plaque dated November 2001 at the entryway to a seventh-floor surgery office reads, "In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr. Tadamasa Goto."
UCLA confirmed the amount of the donation Friday. Law enforcement sources say Goto, 65, is the leader of the ruthless Goto-gumi gang. He received a transplant at UCLA in July 2001, The Times reported Thursday. He made his donation less than three months later.
UCLA also acknowledged that it received a separate $100,000 donation from another man who figured in Thursday's story. He donated in 2002, the year of his transplant.
The man was identified by a law enforcement official as one of four Japanese men now barred from entering the United States because of their suspected gang affiliations, criminal records, or both. All four received new livers at UCLA between 2000 and 2004, The Times reported.
The surgeries took place at a time of persistent shortages of donor livers. In the year of Goto's transplant, 186 patients on the list for livers died while waiting for the operation in the greater Los Angeles region.
U.S. transplant rules allow hospitals to provide organs to patients with criminal histories and to a limited number of foreign patients, but both topics have been controversial. News that UCLA had provided livers to foreigners barred from the country generated considerable comment Friday.