When it comes to organ donation, there’s a natural tendency to focus on the good. But investigations and whistleblowers have exposed a darker reality: donors rushed toward organ removal too soon. When a transplant involves so much money, are some in the chain too eager to declare a life lost? Today, shocking cases where people appeared to wake up or show brain activity right before or even during surgery to remove their organs. Federal reviews show it’s surprisingly common. Now there’s a focus on fixing the system without without losing the lifesaving gift so many still need.
The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
After tragedy, the Honor Walk ceremony offers a powerful tribute to organ donors this one last October in Alabama for 18-year-old Kimber Mills. She’d been shot in the head and was taken off life support three days later, her heart and lungs given to save lives.
Since 1988, more than half a million US organ donors have made 1.1 million transplants possible. 170 million Americans are registered donors, yet more than 100,000 people still wait. Organ Procurement Organizations, OPOs, are nonprofits tasked with managing, removal, and transfer.
But major investigations have exposed disturbing cases involving the “gift of life.”
Nycki Martin: There are some people that will take advantage of a living person and maybe see them more valuable, dead than alive.
As an industry insider, Nycki Martin became a whistleblower. She’s a former surgical preservation coordinator for Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates or KODA.
Martin: I just wanted to be a part of something that was a way to take something tragic and turn it into something beautiful. Quickly found out as soon as I got involved, that was not really the case of what was going on. There are good parts to organ donation, but there’s also a very dark side of it.
“The dark side,” she says, starts with Organ Procurement Organizations, OPOs, targeting potential donors from the moment they arrive at a hospital.
Martin: They have access to your medical charts. They follow you. Every shift change really to kind of watch and see what your prognosis is gonna be and where you’re at, which I think is deceptive from the beginning because your personal information is being viewed by someone who you do not give permission to, because you’re unresponsive. So that’s kind of the first step of deception.
Source: Sharyl Attkisson
