Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced sweeping changes to federally funded organ procurement procedures this week. DHHS discovered a truly disturbing practice that’s been taking place across the country. Organs are being harvested from donors before they are legally dead, which raises all sorts of ethical and legal problems. Kennedy has ordered immediate changes to the nation’s organ transplant system based on the ghoulish practices that his team just uncovered.
Organ donation is one of those questionable medical practices that many people object to on religious grounds. The other common belief that prevents people from becoming organ donors is that if you end up in the hospital, incapacitated, doctors might just chop out your organs while you’re still alive.
Of course, public health officials have stated for years that it is a “debunked conspiracy theory” that doctors would take your eyeballs or kidneys while you’re still alive. That’s crazy talk, right?
One of the first things that RFK did when he was sworn in as HHS Secretary was order the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to do a full-scale review of the practices of all federally funded organ procurement organizations (OPOs). Well… guess what they found?
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy announced this week. “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.”
Kennedy is talking about the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) specifically. The HRSA looked into 351 organ donation cases that took place within a network that spanned Kentucky, southwest Ohio, and part of West Virginia over the past few years during the Biden regime. There were alarming allegations that this particular OPO was carrying out some egregious practices.
The previous OPTN board under the Biden regime dismissed those claims without even looking into them. But here’s what Kennedy’s new MAHA team found.
103 cases had disturbing aspects to them, including 73 cases where the patients were still showing neurological signs of life when they chopped their organs out. In another 28 cases, the patients were definitely still alive.
They also found many additional problems with OPOs, including a systematic disregard for the 5-minute rule in organ procurement. This rule and the phenomenon behind it are unknown to most people. If an organ donor’s heart stops, they might still have neurological signs of life for a while. In many documented cases, some people will auto-resuscitate in a process that’s known as “the Lazarus effect.” OPOs are supposed to wait for at least 5 minutes after it appears that someone died, just in case they suddenly come back to life.
This is surprisingly common when people are taken off life support. When someone is systematically taken off life support, their brain suddenly restarts everything. A 2023 study by French researchers found that this happens in 2% of all cases when people are taken off life support! That figure might be underreported, however. Surveys have found that 50% of all emergency room and ICU physicians report seeing at least one Lazarus effect case over the course of their careers.
So once again, another “debunked conspiracy theory” has turned out to be completely true. Kennedy sounds furious about all this. Unlike Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Kennedy takes his Catholic faith seriously when it comes to a person’s right to live.
HHS has now come up with a list of major reforms that all OPOs must implement and abide by going forward. If they don’t comply, he’s threatened to pull their licenses so they can no longer rip the organs out of patients who are still alive. The changes will include much more rigorous oversight of OPOs, proof that they’re following the 5-minute rule, and providing accurate and complete information about donation procedures to families and hospitals.
How ironic that public health officials have been complaining for years, “We don’t have enough organ donors!” And the whole time, the “conspiracy theorists” were right. They were harvesting organs from people who were still alive. That all changes now, thanks to RFK.