Desai: A dark chapter
A disgrace not only to the medical profession, but to the human race — that was Dipak Desai.
It was at a Feb. 8, 2008, news conference that Southern Nevadans first began to learn that a medical doctor could be pure evil — government officials announced that tens of thousands of patients at his clinics would have to be tested for hepatitis C and HIV.
I was part of an investigative team that reported how the gastroenterologist deliberately set up an assembly-line colonoscopy system devoid of infection controls to save money — one where the reuse of syringes and single dose vials of medicine ultimately killed two people, terribly sickened more than 100 others and generated fear in thousands.
Desai died of a stroke in April in a Reno hospital — he was transferred there from state prison where he was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder conviction and 27 other charges related to his practice.
Three months after his death, Desai’s second-degree murder conviction was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court. Rodolfo Meana, who died as a result of the hepatitis C he caught at Desai’s clinic, had failed to pursue treatment, the justices ruled. They also noted that because it was Desai’s nurse who injected Meana, and not Desai himself, he could not be convicted of murder.
The court upheld additional criminal counts against Desai, including reckless disregard, criminal neglect, theft and obtaining money under false pretenses.
Meana, who died in 2012, told me before his death that he immigrated to the United States to be safe. A retired lieutenant colonel, he had been severely wounded fighting Islamic terrorists in the Philippines.
Then in his mid-70s, he also told me that he didn’t pursue medical treatment for hepatitis C because he didn’t think he was strong enough to handle it. At the time, treatment for that disease was considered as difficult as chemotherapy. He wanted to enjoy his last years the best he could, he said.
Repeatedly, he asked me a question that should never have to be asked.
“What kind of doctors and nurses would take chances with other people’s lives?”