Leipzig organ transplant scandal shocks Germany

Leipzig - German prosecutors are investigating an organ donor scandal in the city of Leipzig where doctors are accused of manipulating an organ donor wait list to shorten the wait of 38 patients in line for a transplant.

According to BBC News, three doctors from the Leipzig University's Clinic's organ transplant center. The manipulation of the donor list is said to have taken place between 2010 and 2011. Germany's healthcare system system has always been one of the most respected around the world, World Conscious Pact reports, but this scandal has shaken people's faith in the medical community. "This is a shocking result for me," Wolfgang Fleig, chair of medicine at the University of Leipzig told Spiegel Online. "I strongly believed up until now that our procedures complied with all the rules." The worldwide shortage of organ donors may be to blame for the problem. The Global Organ Shortage, a book published by the Stanford University Press, examines the organ shortage in the United States and around the world and look at ways to fix it. One of the proposals is to "compensate donors with a publicly controlled monopsony." This is similar to what is currently done in Spain, where donors are compensated in "secret," the book reveals. While the bool examines several ideas to fix the worldwide organ donor shortage, it cannot immediately fix the issues in Germany. Right now, Saxony, the state where Leipzig is located, is in major trouble as many patients there are in dire need of transplants, BBC News reports. Due to the Leipzig scandal, there have already been calls to shut down other local transplant centers to eliminate competition. This could help solve the scandal issue, but there would be even less donors available. In addition to the Leipzig scandals, several similar scandals in were discovered in Germany in 2012, Spiegel Online reports. These scandals occurred in Gottingen, Munich , and Regensberg. It is unknown if these scandals are connected in anyway to the one revealed in Leipzig.