A California doctor is facing felony involuntary manslaughter charges. A two-day-old boy is dead. The cause of death was opioid toxicity from a drug that should never have been anywhere near a newborn during a routine circumcision. This case is a tragedy. It is also a teaching moment that every physician who performs procedures should read carefully.
What Happened
On February 27, 2024, Dr. Hong-An Jan performed a circumcision on two-day-old Charles Wang at his private clinic in Garden Grove, California. According to the lawsuit and court filings, instead of injecting Xylocaine (lidocaine), the appropriate local anesthetic for this procedure, the physician injected Demerol, a synthetic opioid painkiller classified as a Schedule II narcotic. The toxicology report confirmed high levels of Demerol. There was no lidocaine.
The infant became lethargic and unresponsive.
The physician examined him, told the parents this was a normal reaction, sent them home, and ordered no laboratory tests. The following day, Charles was pronounced dead at the hospital. The coroner ruled the cause of death as bronchopneumonia due to acute Demerol intoxication.
Dr. Jan pleaded not guilty in February 2026. His medical license has been suspended pending the outcome of the case.
PS: According to the report, the doctor earned his medical degree in 1967 which would have likely made him about 80 years old in 2024. Commercial airline pilots in the United States are prohibited from flying passengers after age 65 under FAA regulations Federal Aviation Administration — a rule aligned with international aviation standards and based on the straightforward premise that cognitive and physical performance decline with age, and that passengers deserve protection from that risk. Dr. Jan appeared to be in his 80’s when he performed the procedure that killed Charles Wang. There is no equivalent rule for physicians.
A pilot who is 80 years old cannot legally sit in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft.
A physician who is 80 years old can perform procedures on a two-day-old infant in a private office with no oversight, no co-pilot, and no mandatory competency review. Medicine has long resisted what aviation figured out decades ago: that experience and age are not the same thing, and that protecting the public sometimes means protecting it from practitioners who no longer recognize their own limitations.
