This is the kind of story that should make your stomach turn.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, dozens of organ donors may not have actually been dead when the donation process began.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the nightmarish findings Monday in a news release that can only be described as jaw-dropping.
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Kennedy said.
Yes, it is horrifying.
What’s more disturbing is that these cases had already been reviewed and dismissed by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network during the Biden years.
“Under the Biden administration, the OPTN Membership and Professional Standards Committee closed the same case without action,” the release noted.
You read that right.
It took Kennedy — President Donald Trump’s pick at HHS — to expose what the previous regime apparently wanted swept under the rug.
If malfeasance is confirmed, should these families sue this organization into oblivion?
What they found isn’t just bureaucratic failure. It’s immoral.
The Health Resources and Services Administration reviewed hundreds of cases in which organ donation was authorized at hospitals but not necessarily completed.
Out of those, more than 100 were flagged as concerning for one reason or another.
But in 28 cases, patients may not have been deceased when procurement began. More than two dozen people is not a statistic, but an outrage.
These were vulnerable people, mostly in small, rural hospitals, who had no voice.
Character, as is so often said, is what you do when no one is looking.
Apparently, some of the groups in charge of collecting organs saw an opportunity when no one was peering over their shoulder.
And rather than raise alarms, the system looked the other way. Thankfully, Kennedy’s team is demanding accountability.
“Vulnerabilities were highest in smaller and rural hospitals, indicating systemic gaps in oversight and accountability,” HHS said.
HRSA has therefore “mandated strict corrective actions” for the organ procurement program, as well as “system-level changes to safeguard potential organ donors nationally.”
This is what government oversight should look like: not regulating your gas stove or the length of the barrel of your family gun down to a fraction of an inch, but making sure your kidneys aren’t harvested while you still have a heartbeat.
HHS said it will now require reporting on any safety-related donation stoppages and is working to overhaul national standards.
Kennedy vowed, “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.”
That’s a start, as something so jarring should never and would never occur in a civilized country.
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