Readers’s please note: This statement was published in 2006 shortly after Josh’s death. Much has happened since then. My book was eventually published in 2010 and this website has been more deeply developed. Bumrungrad published a statement on their corporate website as a response to my protestations. In April 2015, I responded in full. With my response I also published online for the first time the Goldberg Case: Summary of Medical Treatment prepared by forensic experts I hired. I trust you will find it of interest. —JRG
To Our Many Friends and Readers,
This website started in May of 2006. I decided to provide a near complete record of all events and investigations regarding the death of my son. Transparency or easy access to information, I felt was vital then, and I still feel that way now.
As I have relentlessly pursued a deep and multi channel investigation of why my 23 year old son died at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, I was surprised to find that, without any question in my mind, Joshua, my only son, was killed by hospital staff members and an elaborate cover-up followed which resulted in complete silence and implicit denials of any responsibility.
The forensic evidence is sadly clear. Josh was murdered and the cover up of his pre-meditated murder has been thorough, although filled with mistakes and holes which reveal, unmistakably, the truth.
Why did this 23 year old kid meet with death in that God forsaken place? At this juncture, I can only speculate. But it is clear that no one would go to the extent that Bumrungrad has, including lying to the Police, without a very important motive.
Perhaps, we will, in the ensuing months find that motive, which I personally believe is either based on Bumrungrad’s greed to extend the stay of my son, or to abuse him while subjecting him to coma-inducing drugs, to what very well may be sexual abuse on the part of a well known abuser of young people and children—a senior official at the hospital.
I have also recently discovered that there is a very large business in the trafficking of human organs in South East Asia. I have serious evidence by which I am informed and believe that Bumrungrad may well be in the business of harvesting organs from LIVING human beings and selling them for transplantation either performed at Bumrungrad or other institutions within short flying range of Thailand.
My son was plunged into a drug induced coma which, according to a famous forensic pharmacologist and professor in New York, was accomplished with a mixture of drugs so potent that no physician or nurse of even average competence would administer simultaneously to any patient. Yet, the postmortem examination of my son showed that many of the drugs he was supposed to have been given were not present in his blood stream.
The value of a tissue matched organ from a LIVING donor is enormous—a heart, liver, kidneys and other organs are regularly transplanted—if donors and recipients can be matched. I discovered that the literature of scholars who have studied this problem, is abundant. This is real, it happens on a regular basis and it happens in South East Asia more than any other region on the planet.
It is interesting to note that Thailand is within four hours of flying distance from India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Malaysia and several other countries who have actively joined the Medical Tourism bandwagon. Coincidence? Maybe… maybe not. A heart needs to be transplanted of being harvested from a LIVING donor within four hours in order to maximize the probability that the organ will “take” in the recipient. Other organs have slightly longer shelf lives but there is NO question that an organ from a living donor, is to many, valuable beyond measure. And where there is a demand, there will be a market.
I have put this website up in the interest of informing people who are captivated by the idea of medical care abroad. It’s cheaper, seems safe and is being sold actively by Blue Cross and Blue Shield and United Healthcare, giant American insurance corporations. It is also being sold actively to employees of companies who employ more than 1000 people.
Those companies with large staffs (more than 1000 employees), are almost ALWAYS, self insured. Employees may receive Aetna or Blue Cross policies, as an example, but the benefits are actually paid by the employing company and the insurance company is paid to simply administer the benefits.
So, we find ourselves at the threshold of a very big movement in the United States: to send people abroad for medical care and assuring that those people will receive great treatment and be cared for in an accredited facility.
As it turns out, accreditation by the Joint Commission, a not-for-profit US-based organization, is an accreditation without meaning. It is like a commodity which is paid for by the applying hospital and once given, with rare exceptions, is it ever revoked. By the Joint Commission’s own admission, even though they have the responsibility vested in them in 1965 by the US government to enforce standards, only 1/10th of 1 percent of the 40,000 accreditations ever given in this country (USA) have ever been revoked. This effectively means that if you’ve got the money and can pass what amounts to a rigged beauty contest, you can be accredited.
Bumrungrad, the hospital where my son was murdered, is accredited by the Joint Commission. Yet, despite having informed them, time and again, of factual wrong doing, they have remained silent and have denied that they have any responsibility to the public to reveal their accreditation process or any of their findings.
I intend to sue the Joint Commission as a co-conspirator in the cover up of my son’s death. They have known from early days what happened, but have failed to intervene and, in many ways, stonewalled my investigation even more than the hospital responsible for the killing of my son.
On the eve of my departure for yet another trip to Thailand to seek justice from my slain son, I have realized that an intricate conspiracy exists—which explains why American medicine has become so bad—and why the “powers that be” are actively marketing healthcare abroad.
The motives at play are hardly humanitarian. They are based in greed and in being shielded from legal or criminal recourse.
I have discovered that big money is involved in the running of these off shore institutions. They lie about who they are and what they do. That they are largely immune from responsibility and that the US government and the huge financial interests in the United States are actively participating in the “outsourcing” of patients who, like lambs are being led to an apparently luxurious destination, top level treatment by top level doctors.
I am sure that there are good doctors and successful procedures. But there is also a plethora of botched surgeries—and deaths—which are skillfully covered up by the big interests which run these operations.
I can never bring my son back—and the pain of having lost a son to these murderers is constant and unbearable is pain without end. My intention is to do whatever I can to spare others from the suffering I have experienced and from the realization, that life is essentially CHEAP in the cultures where Medical Tourism/Outsourcing is most active.
Many of these cultures actually look down on Americans and Western Europeans, caring even less about their fates that that of their own people. With all due respect to the people of Thailand and their august King, Thailand is a brutal and corrupt place. On the surface, all appears well. Beneath the pleasant smiles are a people who are so imbued in corruption, they don’t, I believe, know the difference between what is right and wrong… and in Thailand, EVERYTHING is for sale!
Hospitals like Bumrungrad maintain full time, large PR departments, who spread the word, around the world about how good it’s going to be. US and European drug companies are delighted because they get to sell drugs which are not yet approved in other parts of the world. US and British hospital owners, such as Tenet Healthcare and BUPA, actually own or manage the very facilities to which these patients are being sent, or voluntarily going.
They are very interested because they have to pay doctors far less, nurses far less, procedures, far less. But most importantly, IF something goes wrong, the countries in which they operate are without malpractice laws or without state oversight. They can literally get away with murder and never have to face the music! What a deal… for them! What hell is in store for the victims?
I have received death threats from anonymous sources which I believe come from Bumrungrad Hospital. Will they succeed in silencing the one person who has dedicated the rest of his life to stand up to them? I don’t know.
But what I do know, is that the information contained in this site, is a living, transparent record of a murder. Whether I have the breath to pursue it or not, I have established it in memory of my son with hopes that the terrible realizations I have found will form the foundation for others to pick up and make sure that this terrible scam is brought to an end.
I pray for the people who killed my son—though tremendous anger is ever present. I have tried to learn that there is a profound difference, according to Buddha, between wrath and anger. Anger is about you. Wrath is about others.
I dedicate my efforts to all of those whose lives might be touched, as mine has, and ask only that you consider what I have found. You be the judge as to whether the death of my son, after reading the details contained herein, is an isolated instance or a representation of a new generation of corruption and degeneration at the expense of human beings in need of medical care.
My most recent visit to Bangkok and Bumrungrad in May 2007 was momentous. Through connections with the Royal Thai Family, I was able to connect with the Commanding General of all Police in Thailand to lodge a complaint regarding the laissez faire attitude of the Lumpini Police—who were charged with investigating my son’s murder but did nothing for a year!
Next, I decided to personally confront Dr. Sukkitti, Dr. Morley and Mr. Mac Banner, CEO of the Hospital at the HOSPITAL. Upon locating Dr. Sukkitti, who I am informed and believe was the instrument of Dr. Morley in my son’s death armed guards and Dr. Morley, the architect, I allege, who was behind my son’s murder, appeared. While I was beaten by the Guards, Dr. Sukkitti disappeared behind closed doors and Dr. Morley, the man that he “is”, ran away down a long hallway when I asked him why and how he killed my son.
I am awaiting word from the US Embassy as to the response of the Police General and have begun criminal and civil proceedings here in the US in addition to pressing the Thai’s to take responsibility for insuring that their laws—however thin—are fully enforced.
Thailand, like so many of the other places where Medical Tourism/Outsourcing takes place (without laws which protect victims) and the assurances that are given to people the world over that patients are protected by seeking services at an accredited institution—the Joint Commission—are completely without merit as the accreditation process and seal of approval are bought but never enforced. The Joint Commission is at the hub of legitimizing Medical Tourism. There is big money at stake and they, along with their co-conspirators, will do anything to grab money at the sake of patient safety.
A book detailing, for the first time, how all these hideous pieces fit together is now being written following this Bumrungrad death: The American Medical Money Machine, and will hopefully be published by the end of 2007.
If you do seek treatment… ANYWHERE… take a family member or someone with some medical knowledge who is not afraid to ask questions. Go ahead, be a pain in the behind. It may save your life!
Sincerely,
Please review my Alerts and Recommendations for Prospective Patients.