Waaay back in 1978, the film version of physician/novelist Robin Cook’s science fiction novel “Coma” (above) gave audiences the heebie-jeebies about being operated on. An “ends-justifies the means” chief of surgery had devised a diabolical way to have fresh organs ready to become life-saving transplants: one specially rigged operating room turned healthy-ish patients into brain dead victims (A young Tom Selleck was one of them!), and they ended up in a storage facility where their bodies were kept fresh and breathing until hearts, lings, livers or kidneys were needed.
Haven’t you always assumed that hospitals sometimes took essential organs from organ donors who were still alive, if barely? I have friends who aren’t organ donors specifically for that reason, and, yes, most of them remember “Coma.”
From an HHS press release this week:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the leadership of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. today announced a major initiative to begin reforming the organ transplant system following an investigation by its Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that revealed disturbing practices by a major organ procurement organization.
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy said. “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.”
HRSA directed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to reopen a disturbing case involving potentially preventable harm to a neurologically injured patient by the federally-funded organ procurement organization (OPO) serving Kentucky, southwest Ohio, and part of West Virginia. Under the Biden administration, the OPTN’s Membership and Professional Standards Committee closed the same case without action.
Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HRSA demanded a thorough, independent review of the OPO’s conduct and the treatment of vulnerable patients under its care. HRSA’s independent investigation revealed clear negligence after the previous OPTN Board of Directors claimed to find no major concerns in their internal review.
HRSA examined 351 cases where organ donation was authorized, but ultimately not completed. It found:
- 103 cases (29.3%) showed concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation.
- At least 28 patients may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated—raising serious ethical and legal questions.
- Evidence pointed to poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death, particularly in overdose cases.
Vulnerabilities were highest in smaller and rural hospitals, indicating systemic gaps in oversight and accountability. In response to these findings, HRSA has mandated strict corrective actions for the OPO, and system-level changes to safeguard potential organ donors nationally. The OPO must conduct a full root cause analysis of its failure to follow internal protocols—including noncompliance with the five-minute observation rule after the patient’s death—and develop clear, enforceable policies to define donor eligibility criteria. Additionally, it must adopt a formal procedure allowing any staff member to halt a donation process if patient safety concerns arise.
HRSA also took action to make sure that patients across the country will be safer when donating organs by directing the OPTN to improve safeguards and monitoring at the national level. Under HRSA’s directive, data about any safety-related stoppages of organ donation called for by families, hospitals, or OPO staff must be reported to regulators, and the OPTN must update policies to strengthen organ procurement safety and provide accurate, complete information about the donation process to families and hospitals.
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. 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.
HHS recognizes House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie’s (KY-02) bipartisan work to improve the organ transplant system and looks forward to working with him and other issue-area champions in Congress to deliver reforms.
Good. It should also surprise nobody that a Democratic administration that worships abortion by pretending that unborn children are not living human beings and thus can be legally sacrificed in the interests of adults who are reliable Democratic voters would see nothing amiss about terminating a still-living patient without proper legal consent for “the greater good.” One incident that has awakened somnolent lawmakers was in October 2021, according to reporting from Fox56 in Lexington. Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, organ donor who had been admitted to Baptist Health Richmond’s Emergency Room in cardiac arrest, was declared brain dead. His family was informed, and agreed to have his wishe to have his organs donated honored. Then Hoover opened his eyes and began “thrashing around … and pushing everybody’s hands away.” Nyckoletta Martin, a surgical preservation coordinator, testified later that two doctors refused to continue with the procedure, “but the KODA coordinator that was on site that day actually called KODA’s admin for some guidance and was told, ‘You will find another surgeon or you’ll lose your job because we’re going to complete this case.'”
I’m trying to recall if that was an actual scene in “Coma.” I know there was an equivalent scene in “The Island” (#17 in this EA ethics movie list), a filmic allegory about abortion. Abortion is at the heart of our cultures gradual devaluing of human life, another symptom of cultural and ethical rot seeded by the political left. The organ harvesting story has barely been touched by the Axis media—after all, the real life-and-death issues the public needs to know about involve a dead sexual predator’s non-existent “client list” and the First Amendment being in peril because CBS will cancel a money-losing late night TV show next May.
Whatever one may think about Bobby Kennedy Jr. (and don’t get me started), he’s ethically and morally and legally right to address this issue.
Ethics Alarms 
The media doesn’t cover it because they don’t want to and because their viewers won’t believe it anyway. TDS sufferers don’t believe anything that comes out of this administration, regardless of how long ago the documents produced were made or under what administration. They don’t believe the patients in question were alive in any meaningful sense of the word.
That’s the problem with TDS: one of its symptoms is that the sufferer filters everything through the lens of Trump Lies which means nothing he or any of the brownshirts who work for him says is true and anyone who tries to convince them otherwise is acting in bad faith.
If and when Kennedy ever decides to truly dive in depth on this issue, this issue of taking organs in the U.S. Hospitals has been going on for many years for the same reasons China uses….You Are Worth More Dead Than Alive to the medical field.. The patient is a money maker for the physicians/HOSPITALS. If you are someone coming from the medical field they already know this fact.
Not sure which is worse-harvesting organs from a not quite dead person, or harvesting them from someone who is too compromised to be an organ donor.
That’s assuming the not quite dead person is in fact truly terminal.
Cue the “Bring out your dead!” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.