XPost: alt.fan.states.kentucky, sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: talk.politics.medicine   
   From: butchers@obamacare.com   
      
   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. Though the donor had been   
   declared dead, he seemed to her very much alive.   
      
   “He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing   
   around on the bed,” Miller told NPR in an interview. “And then when we   
   went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying   
   visibly.”   
      
   The donor’s condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at Baptist   
   Health hospital in Richmond, Ky., including the two doctors, who   
   refused to participate in the organ retrieval, she says.   
      
   “The procuring surgeon, he was like, ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to   
   have anything to do with it,’ ” Miller says. “It was very chaotic.   
   Everyone was just very upset.”   
      
   Miller says she overheard the case coordinator at the hospital for her   
   employer, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), call her supervisor   
   for advice.   
      
   “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 says. “And she’s like, ‘There is no one else.’   
   She’s crying — the coordinator — because she’s getting yelled at.”   
      
   "Everybody's worst nightmare"   
   The organ retrieval was canceled. But some KODA workers say they later   
   quit over the October 2021 incident, including another organ   
   preservationist, Nyckoletta Martin.   
      
   “I’ve dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplant. It’s   
   very scary to me now that these things are allowed to happen and   
   there’s not more in place to protect donors,” says Martin.   
      
   Martin was not assigned to the operating room that day, but she says   
   she thought she might get drafted. So she started to review case notes   
   from earlier in the day. She became alarmed when she read that the   
   donor showed signs of life when doctors tried to examine his heart, she   
   says.   
      
   “The donor had woken up during his procedure that morning for a cardiac   
   catheterization. And he was thrashing around on the table,” Martin   
   says.   
      
   Cardiac catheterization is performed on potential organ donors to   
   evaluate whether the heart is healthy enough to go to a person in need   
   of a new heart.   
      
   Martin says doctors sedated the patient when he woke up and plans to   
   recover his organs proceeded.   
      
   KODA officials downplayed the incident afterwards, according to Martin.   
   She was dismayed at that, she says.   
      
   “That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery   
   and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body   
   parts out?” Martin says. “That’s horrifying.”   
      
   The patient   
   Donna Rhorer of Richmond, Kentucky, told NPR that her 36-year-old   
   brother, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, was the patient involved in the   
   case. He was rushed to the hospital because of a drug overdose, she   
   says.   
      
   Rhorer was at the hospital that day. She says she became concerned   
   something wasn’t right when TJ appeared to open his eyes and look   
   around as he was being wheeled from intensive care to the operating   
   room.   
      
   “It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, ‘Hey, I’m   
   still here,’ ” Rhorer told NPR in an interview.   
      
   But Rhorer says she and other family members were told what they saw   
   was just a common reflex. TJ Hoover now lives with Rhorer, and she   
   serves as his legal guardian.   
      
   The general outline of the incident was disclosed in September by a   
   letter Nyckoletta Martin wrote to the House Energy and Commerce   
   Committee, which held a hearing investigating organ procurement   
   organizations. She later provided additional details about the case to   
   NPR.   
      
   “Several of us that were employees needed to go to therapy. It took its   
   toll on a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.   
      
   Investigations underway   
   The Kentucky state attorney general’s office wrote in a statement to   
   NPR that investigators are “reviewing” the allegations.   
      
   The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which   
   helps oversee organ procurement, said in a statement to NPR that the   
   agency is “investigating these allegations.” And some people involved   
   in the case told NPR they have answered questions from the Office of   
   the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human   
   Services, though no federal official from that office has commented on   
   the case.   
      
   Baptist Health Richmond, the Kentucky hospital where that incident   
   allegedly occurred, told NPR in a statement:   
      
   “The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work   
   closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’   
   wishes for organ donation are followed.”   
      
   "Not been accurately represented"   
   KODA, the organ procurement organization, confirmed that Miller was   
   assigned to the operating room for the case. But the organization told   
   NPR in a statement that “this case has not been accurately represented.   
      
   “No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any   
   living patient,” according to the statement from Julie Bergin,   
   president and chief operating officer for Network for Hope, which was   
   formed when KODA merged with the LifeCenter Organ Donor Network. “KODA   
   does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured   
   its team members to do so.”   
      
   Organ procurement system officials, transplant surgeons and others said   
   that there are strict protocols in place to prevent unsafe organ   
   retrieval from happening.   
      
   “Incidents like this are alarming. And we would want them to be   
   properly reported and evaluated,” Dorrie Dils, president of the   
   Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, told NPR in an   
   interview. “And obviously we want to ensure that individuals are, in   
   fact, dead when organ donation is proceeding. And we want the public to   
   trust that that is indeed happening. The process is sacred.”   
      
   The accusations that emerged at the congressional hearing in September   
   undermine trust in the organ donation system and have led to a drop in   
   people signing up to be donors, according to an open letter released   
   Oct. 3 by the organization.   
      
   “For over five years, our nation’s organ procurement organizations   
   (OPOs) – the non-profit, community-based organizations that work with   
   grieving families every day to save lives through transplantation –   
   have been subject to malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks   
   based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donation and   
   transplant in the U.S. is untrustworthy and broken,” the letter reads.   
      
   Others also fear such unnerving reports could undermine the organ   
   transplant system.   
      
   “These are horrifying stories. I think they need to be followed up   
   carefully,” says Dr. Robert Truog, a professor of medical ethics,   
   anesthesia and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who works as a   
   critical care physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.   
      
      
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