Lucrative Fields: Life imitates a Robin Cook novel in Moscow:

Four Moscow doctors have been accused of plotting to murder a patient for his kidneys so that they could use them for lucrative and possibly illegal transplantations.

The case has raised fears that doctors across Russia are engaging in such practices.

The four doctors—Irina Lirtsman, Lyubov Pravdenko, Pyotr Pyatnichuk, and Bairma Shagdurnova—all worked in Moscow City Hospital No 20.

Dr Lirtsman was deputy head of the intensive care unit, Dr Pravdenko a doctor in the unit, and the two men were both transplant surgeons.

Scary stuff. They must not make their medical students take ethics classes in Russia.