Investigation Reveals Flaws in U.S. Organ Donation Process

An investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uncovered problems with a federally funded organization that procures organs, including the authorization of organ donation from patients still showing signs of life, the agency said on July 21.

The Health Resources and Services Administration, part of HHS, investigated the organization’s conduct and found “clear negligence,” HHS said in a statement.

The agency reviewed 351 cases where organ donation was authorized but ultimately not completed and found that in 103 cases, patients showed neurological signs such as pain or had no cardiac time of death marked down when procurement was started.

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in the statement.

The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.

“The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

The probe also showed that staffers with the federally funded organization, which procures organs in Kentucky, southwest Ohio, and part of West Virginia, approached potential donors’ family members who they believed were under the influence of drugs or lacked the capacity to understand decisions to donate, according to a letter made public by the government on July 21.

The investigated organization’s name has not been made public. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, a public-private partnership that includes organ procurement organizations and transplant hospitals, probed the organization over potentially causing harm to an injured patient during the previous administration but closed the case without action.

Based on the results of the probe, the government has directed the network to reopen the case.

The government said in the letter, which was sent to network leaders, that it has since received reports of possible similar issues at other federally funded organ procurement organizations and that reviews of those organizations are ongoing.

Kennedy directed the network to develop plans to address the issues raised in the probe, including developing minimum neurologic assessments and proposing policies that will improve how potential donors are handled. The proposals shall include how pausing the process can happen if families are concerned that patients are experiencing pain, as well as automatic pauses if patients display “objective signs of improving neurologic status,” the letter states.

“These findings from HHS confirm what the Trump administration has long warned: entrenched bureaucracies, outdated systems, and reckless disregard for human life have failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” the HHS stated. “Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS is restoring integrity and transparency to organ procurement and transplant policy by putting patients’ lives first. These reforms are essential to restoring trust, ensuring informed consent, and protecting the rights and dignity of prospective donors and their families.”

The United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that under a federal contract administers the network and is listed as the media contact for the network, said in a statement on July 21 that it welcomed improved oversight of the organ donation system.

“We believe this shift will bring greater consistency and transparency to the regulation of all components of the donation and transplant process—benefiting patients, donor families, and the entire community,” the nonprofit stated.

The update comes after the House of Representatives approved a measure in May that would punish people involved with forced organ harvesting in China, where the Chinese Communist Party has engaged in state-sanctioned organ harvesting targeting prisoners of conscience, primarily Falun Gong practitioners, according to findings from the China Tribunal.

In 2022, a study published in the American Journal of Transplantation found that at least hundreds of medical professionals in China were involved in taking organs from people without establishing their brain death.

–By Zachary Stieber with Eva Fu contributing to this report. The Epoch Times News Service