Medical expert of the article
New publications
The most high-profile scandal in the history of German transplantology
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
In a clinic in the city of Gottingen, they were selling places on the waiting list for donor organs, that is, in essence, trading the right to life. As a result, at least one child died without ever receiving a transplant.
Patients who have someone else's heart beating in their chest, who have had a liver or kidney transplant, and those who are just waiting in an endless queue for an operation, gather once a week. Usually they talk about pleasant things. But not today, when they learned that at the University Clinic of Göttingen, doctors were simply trading in the right to life.
"I saw people dying in this hospital because they did not wait for their turn for a heart transplant. I recently met a family, their child was waiting for a kidney and a lung. Now I heard that he did not survive," Sevinc Merkit shares.
At least 25 organ transplants were illegally performed at the university clinic, half of all such operations that were performed there in a year. This is the loudest scandal in the history of German transplantology. Those who were themselves on the waiting list for a transplant do not understand how this was even possible.
"In the Dutch city of Leiden there is a pan-European center, Eurotransplant. They have a computer database of potential donors and patients who are waiting for a transplant. When an organ is ready for transplant, it is not the doctor who is asked, but Eurotransplant, who is next in line," says patient Ingo Jaeger.
In order to quickly obtain the necessary organ, the clinic falsified both tests and medical records so that, according to the documents, a non-urgent patient would allegedly be on the verge of life and death. This way, he would receive priority. How much such services cost is still unknown. The prosecutor's office is reluctant to share information. The Organ Transplant Association admits to being completely helpless.
"There is currently no control mechanism to prevent such manipulations in the future. In the entire German medical community, no one could have imagined that a doctor could report incorrect test results," says Hans Lilie, head of the German Medical Association for Organ Transplantation.
Every day in Germany, three people die because they couldn't get a new heart, liver or kidney. To change that, the German Bundestag recently passed a new transplant law.
Since November 1 this year, every German citizen must carry an organ donor ID card with them at all times. You must write your first name, last name, date of birth, address, and on the back answer a clearly stated question: do you agree that your organs can be used for transplantation after your death? If for some reason you cannot answer this question, then write the name of a relative who can make the decision for you.
The medical community fears that after this scandal in Germany there will be more people who wrote "no, I do not agree" and that those who really cannot wait will lose their right to life.