Maybe HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was onto something this summer.
The Washington Examiner reported that whistleblowers have accused the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network of violating patient safety rules.
The accusations include coercing patients to remove and harvest organs even if they show signs of life.
The publication received a detailed letter from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman David Schweikert (R-AZ):
One of the allegations against the NJTO involves the cover-up of a case involving the donation of a patient’s organs after circulatory death, wherte the patient continues to show neurological signs of life.Smith and Scheikert include in their letter to NJTO the circumstances of a patient declared deceased at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, who “reanimated” shortly after being taken into surgery. The legislators wrote to NJTO President Carolyn Welsh that their investigation indicates that she, as well as other NJTO staff, attempted to pressure hospital staff to continue with the surgery, which hospital staff ultimately refused to do.Whistleblowers also alleged, according to the congressmen, that NJTO pressured families into consenting to organ donation for deceased loved ones or insisted that they did not need consent based upon information collected from the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission.The Ways and Means leadership wrote that whistleblowers made them aware of “several cases where, even though patients had removed the donor designation from their licenses, NJTO allegedly did not consider that to be a change of the original authorization to be an organ donor.”
I looked up “New Jersey organ donation” on YouTube and a few videos…yikes.
In July, Kennedy announced he would reform the organ transplant system after an investigation by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) revealed disturbing information.
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Kennedy said at the time. “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 investigation found that out of the 351 cases it examined:
[Featured image via YouTube]
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