WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Health and Human Services has officially launched an investigation into the ongoings of the organ donation industry following an unsettling case out of Kentucky involving a man who awoke during an attempted organ harvesting procedure after being declared “brain dead.”
On July 22nd, a House subcommittee conducted a hearing regarding the practices and safety concerns revolving around and within the organ donation industry, where the topic of Network for Hope, which recently merged with Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), was brought up.
KODA has been under a proverbial microscope following the disturbing October 2021 case of TJ Hoover out of Kentucky, the man who was apparently very much alive while an attempt was made to harvest his organs at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond.
Natasha Miller, who previously worked as a surgical preservationist on Hoover’s case for KODA, spoke to NPR this past October, recalling that she realized something was wrong from the moment the patient was brought into the operating room. “He was moving around - kind of thrashing,” Miller said, adding, “Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed. And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”
Miller said everyone in the operating room was alarmed, with the two doctors slated to perform the organ harvesting operation refusing to do so in light of the fact that Hoover was clearly not brain dead.
According to Miller, Hoover’s KODA case coordinator immediately called their supervisor for advice, to which Miller claimed she overheard the supervisor telling the coordinator to simply find another doctor to harvest Hoover’s organs.
“So, the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time. And she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to ‘find another doctor to do it’ - that, ‘We were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else,’” Miller told the news outlet, adding that the coordinator started crying after their supervisor at KODA began yelling at them over the phone since the hospital staff refused to remove the organs of a living patient.
Hoover’s sister, Donna Rhorer, was seemingly in the dark while the scenario was playing out in real time in the operating room, only being informed some 45 minutes afterward that hospital staff were not going through with the procedure due to Hoover showing clear signs of life.
Rhorer didn’t learn the full extent of what went on behind the scenes regarding her brother until she was contacted by a former coordinator for KODA, Nyckoletta Martin, who was among those slated to work on Hoover’s case.
Recollecting the day of the attempted organ harvesting, Martin said, “I was really surprised that that morning he had been taken to the cardiac cath lab, he was paralyzed and sedated, and moved on with the OR. The hospital staff said they were incredibly alarmed, calling it euthanasia.”
Miller and Martin were among those who quit working for KODA following Hoover’s case, but the organization in question claims that Hoover’s case has been misrepresented even though they confirmed Miller was inside the operating room when the alleged phone call demanding the procedure move forward occurred.
KODA President and COO Julie Bergin told NPR in a statement last October, “No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient. KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”
As for the recent House subcommittee hearing and ongoing investigation into organ harvesting practices, Network for Hope CEO Barry Massa issued a separate statement calling the congressional hearing “an important step toward increasing transparency for the millions of people who choose to register to be organ donors across the country.”
