Surgeon Who Etched His Initials on Patients’ Livers Is Convicted of Assault<br />According to British news reports, Mr. Bramhall, 53, admitted to using an argon beam — an electrified gas jet<br />that liver surgeons typically employ to stanch bleeding or to mark an area of operation on an organ — to etch "SB," his initials, onto the livers.<br />Joyce Robins, who represented Patient Concern, a campaign group, was quoted by The Guardian as saying at the time: "This is a patient we are talking about, not an autograph book." At Birmingham Crown Court on Thursday, the lead prosecutor, Tony Badenoch, said<br />that Mr. Bramhall’s guilty pleas "represent an acceptance that that which he did was not just ethically wrong but criminally wrong." Please verify you’re not a robot by clicking the box.<br />Mr. Bramhall said that His acts in marking the livers of those patients were deliberate and conscious acts.<br />The surgeon, Simon Bramhall, who gained fame in 2010 after successfully transplanting a plane-crash victim’s liver<br />into a patient, pleaded guilty in Birmingham, England, on Thursday to two counts of assault by beating.<br />15, 2017<br />LONDON — A prominent British surgeon who etched his initials onto the livers of two patients, in a case<br />that shocked many with its audacity, has been convicted of assault.<br />Earlier this year, the General Medical Council issued a formal warning to Mr. Bramhall, saying<br />that while his actions were not serious enough to "require any restriction" on his registration, his conduct had not met the standards required of a doctor.<br />"Even if he did put his initials on a transplanted liver, is it really<br />that bad?" she told The Birmingham Mail in 2014, after Mr. Bramhall was suspended.
