 Worth the money?
Searching for answers regarding Laleh and Ladan's surgery
By Mohammad Ala
July 24, 2003
The Iranian
More and more evidence is surfacing that Laleh and Ladan Bijani's death was financially
motivated. Many doctors and their adoptive parents (Safaian family) who raised
them for twenty-seven years were against their surgery. It was only after the
terrible surgery that the media voiced people's concerns.
The Raffles Hospital has not provided accurate information
about the twins. The hospital's
site mentions that the twins were born in 1974 but in fact
the twins were 31 years old of age when they passed away in July
2003, as they were born in 1972. The
Safaian family adopted the twins when they were about three years old.
Dr. Safaian took Laleh and Ladan (with permission
of the orphanage where they were staying) to Germany for possible
surgery before adopting them in 1975.
The tests indicated that the twins would not survive if the operation were
to be
performed at that time. The chance of survival was only one percent then
and according to Dr. Safaian remained one percent at the time of
their death.
Safaian's parents raised the children for ten years,
and then Dr. Safaian's brother's family adopted them and provided
excellent living conditions for
them. The children
had comfortable accommodations and were able to finish high school and
enter Tehran University's law school (despite the fact that the
entrance examinations
for the law school are very difficult).
We have submitted the following questions to the
Raffles Hospital and all the doctors who performed the operation
especially Dr. Keith Goh. We will
be happy
to include any replies which we receive to the questions set forth below:
-- Why the Raffles Hospital took the twin's brain
without permission or without informing the public of this action?
-- Why Dr. Safaian's family who raised the twins
for 27 years was not
consulted?
-- Why Dr. Safaian was not invited to be one of the
participating doctors?
-- Almost 2 years ago, Laleh and Ladan left
the Safaian family and changed their last name to Bijani. Was this
necessary?
-- Were the twins provided with psychological counseling?
-- Dr. Benjamin Carson of the Johns Hopkins University
had said that their chance of survival was 50/50. But when he was
asked
if he would
allow a
50/50 operation
to be performed on him, he had said: "no way."
-- Medical
technology could clearly show that the twins had 4 centimeters of
common veins. It was not necessary to expose their brains to find
this out. Moreover, what procedures were taken to ensure that the
part
of head opened (equal
to a five dollar bill) supposed to be covered?
-- Why the Safaian's
housekeeper's daughter was representing the twins in Singapore?
Why was a bank account opened for her?
-- Why the children in
the past 2 years did not contact the Safaian family? Was there
an arrangement of some sort which has
not been revealed to the public? We understand that certain details would
have had to be clarified prior
to surgery (for example, questions regarding organ donation), but
the secrecy with which
Raffles Hospital has surrounded the entire sad affair is very upsetting
to
us.
As most doctors in Iran who have expertise
in this type of surgery, as well as
surgeons in Germany and the USA, would have refused to proceed
with the surgery, we believe that secret deals must have
occurred in order
to
transfer the
twins to Singapore. Given the tragic results of such deals, we
urgently request answers. Author
Dr. Ala is Professor of Production and
Operations Management and Director of Productivity Center at
California State University,
Los
Angeles.
He is also
the President of Iranians for International Cooperation and
founder of iran-heritage.org and iranalliance.org.
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