The Highwire with Del Bigtree - HARVESTED ALIVE?

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

The organ donation system is under intense scrutiny after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services directed the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to investigate America’s organ procurement practices. The probe uncovered alarming findings, including nearly 30% of reviewed cases showing serious concerns—ranging from neurological signs inconsistent with organ donation eligibility to a shocking 28 patients who may not have been deceased at the time their organs were harvested.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Secretary Kennedy at HHS has been doing some really great work in some spaces and a lot of spaces here historically and one of those spaces we've seen headlines like this just recently this is an issue in the organ procurement really space in the United States this is a big space people need organs life-saving organs for a lot of situations that they have with their bodies and a lot of people don't get them unfortunately but there's a flip side to that This headline from NPR kind of really puts a finer point on this flip side. It says, horrifying mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say. Goes into this article here.

We're going to go on the highwire a little bit on this here. It says Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room. She quickly realized something wasn't right. The donor had been declared dead. He seemed to her very much alive. He was moving around, she said, kind of thrashing, like moving, thrashing around in the bed, Miller told NPR in an interview. And then when we were, when we went over there, you could see she had had tears coming down.

He was crying visibly. That's what's going on. They pronounced him dead. He was pronounced brain dead and they go in there. And one of the things with organ harvesting is you can't take them from someone that's been dead. So there's this really big gray area. And it's a, it's a sliding scale of a gray area where you have to. to do this in time for viable organs and that's just how that works. So Health and Human

Services tasked HRSA to do an independent investigation into America's organ procurement system. And they produced a report here and it says this, HHS finds systemic disregard for sanctity of life and organ transplant system. It goes on to say, 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 donations. That means they were alive. At least 28 patients may have not been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated, raising serious ethical and legal concerns. Evidence pointed to poor neurological assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent

practices, and misclassification of cases of death, particularly in overdose cases. So you have this system. There's really not as much of a watchful eye on it that there should be. And you have this also. They're supposed to be self-regulating themselves. So there is something called the Oregon Procurement and Transplantation Network, OPTN.

And they have a board of directors. This is a public-private partnership that oversees all professionals in the US involved in this donation and transportation system. You go into HHS's report about OPTN, and they said that, Under the Biden administration, the O.PTN's membership and professional standards committee closed the same case without action. HERSA's independent investigation revealed clear negligence after the previous OPTN board directors claimed to find no major concerns in their internal review.

They didn't want people looking into it. They swept it under the rug. Fortunately, for HHS, they did this investigation. And fortunately, we also had a House committee hearing on this just last week. And these were some of the questions that were asked. Mr. Lynch, in your written testimony, I want to read something and I quote as HRSA was directing the OPTN to conduct the review of KYDA practices, an industry trade group, the Association of Oregon Procurement Organizations, publicized an open letter characterizing the ongoing effort to improve patient safety through enhanced oversight as a misinformation conspiracy campaign and concluded it is time for it to stop.

and it was signed by more than 20 of the UNO's staff. Would that letter constitute an attempt to obstruct HERSA's investigation? The legal definition of obstruct, I don't believe I would be the... I'm not talking about a legal definition. It was concerning to HERSA that numerous high-ranking members of the contractor and members of the OPTN board did sign that. and in the review committee that we directed the OPTN to undertake, we asked that nobody who was a signer to that be a part.

But basically, they were saying there's nothing to be seen here. That's correct. Okay. But that's not the first time you've had issues. Your written testimony also notes that historically, HRSA did not receive complete consistent and at times accurate information regarding patient safety and complaints and concerns raised by the OPTN members

and other stakeholders. So if there's any consistency here, it's a consistency in trying to shield what they were actually doing. So scary. I mean, it's an actual horror movie we're talking about. And they're talking about government officials essentially looking the other way. Right.

And, you know, you see this. And I'm sorry, but anytime I see the word misinformation now, I'm thinking there is a power structure trying to protect the dominant narrative. So they're saying, we want this investigation. And this group comes in, this trade group comes in and says, misinformation. You shouldn't do this. These are lies.

You shouldn't look into this. This is actually a conspiracy that you're having to look into this. Well, they have a big problem. One of the problems is the actual definition of brain death. And there's a study that looked at this. It's that the definition was settled on in 1968 by Harvard researchers. And it was mostly for the clinicians, not the patient. And the conclusion in this article, looking at all the considerations of what's called clinical brain death,

and that's one of the big thing that's used to begin this organ procurement. And it says this. The main question addressed in this article was whether the concept of brain death is still valid. According to the presented arguments, the concept of brain death as a synonymous term with human death, diagnosed according to the criteria of irreversible cessation of lung and cardiac function is invalid. We consider that the interest of the organ transplantation program would be better served by openness and honesty. So they have this gray area. They have this issue.

Research and investigations are saying, look, this gray area has gone a little bit too far. We need to rein this in. We really need to look at this entire system that we have here. We know people need organs. This is a dire situation for a lot of people on these lists. Let's figure this out. HHS has taken the lead on this. and thank God they have.

Wow. I mean, and you think of all the people that, you know, have it written on their driver's license or whatever and, you know,

want to be doing what's right, but you certainly don't want, you know, your own death being fast-tracked in order to save somebody else, which is what this looks like and the money around it, right? I mean, they make,

these hospitals make huge money selling these organs, doing these process. So it's incentivizing sort of what we saw in COVID, incentivizing a diagnosis that may not necessarily be COVID, incentivizing, put you on, you know, a ventilator, incentivizing remdesivir, incentivizing, removing an organ.

These are the types of things where we've, you know, I'm glad, you know, Robert Kennedy Jr. is in there. And actually, like, being really, we've got to look at these things. We've got to reassess how we're defining death and make sure that you're dead if we're taking these things. So it's really an amazing story. And I think, sure, shocking for people that probably have relatives that their organs were taken, wondering, you know, I hope. I hope that they were actually, you know, not going to make it.