In October 2021, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II suffered cardiac arrest after a drug overdose and was transported to Baptist Health Richmond, a hospital in Kentucky. He was subsequently declared “brain dead.” As he was being transported to the operating room for surgeons to harvest his organs for transplantation, organ procurement organization (OPO) employee Natasha Miller recalled to NPR:
He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed. And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.
The surgeons refused to operate, but the supervisor for the OPO, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), ordered the case coordinator: “You will find another surgeon [to harvest Hoover’s organs] or you’ll lose your job because we’re going to complete this case.”
Hoover’s case led to an investigation of the OPO Network for Hope by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). (Network for Hope was formed in October 2024 following the merger of KODA with LifeCenter Organ Donor Network.) HHS documented the failure of Network for Hope to observe basic safeguards to protect patients. For example, 29.3% of potential organ donors demonstrated “concerning features, including… neurological signs incompatible with organ donation.” Phrased less euphemistically, the patients were demonstrably alive.
An OPO is an agency designated by the federal government to oversee organ retrieval and allocation in a given geographic region. The federal government can decertify an OPO and give its contract to a competitor. Based on the findings of its investigation, on August 5th, HHS began the decertification process of Network for Hope, which serves all of Kentucky and portions of Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia.
It’s important to note that HHS does not claim that the concept of “brain death” is invalid. Rather, the federal agency assumes that “brain death” is a valid concept, but is decertifying Network for Hope because patients did not meet the criteria for “brain death.” In other words, even the staunchest “brain death” proponent would agree that these patients were alive.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the recent announcement by HHS is that Network for Hope was given a full year to fix these safety problems, but failed to do so. Tom Engels, Administrator of HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), said:
HRSA, through its oversight of the OPTN [Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network], worked closely with Network of Hope [sic] over the past year through intensive monitoring and corrective action to address serious patient safety concerns. Despite those efforts, the organization did not demonstrate the improvements necessary to meet federal standards.
Besides the ethical imperative to correct the safety concerns, Network for Hope also had a compelling financial motive: decertification would lead to loss of its contract and thus a substantial loss of money. Thus, every reason exists to believe that Network for Hope both wanted to and tried to address the safety concerns. This leads to the alarming conclusion that Network for Hope could not make the necessary changes, that safeguards had been so widely ignored for so long a period of time that the system could not be fixed.
It may be that Network for Hope is an anomaly and that all other OPOs closely adhere to federal guidelines. However, it is also possible that Network for Hope is representative of widespread disregard for safety amongst OPOs. We cannot know until investigations have been performed.
What is the significance of this for Catholics?
In Pope Benedict XVI’s2008 address to the international conference on organ transplantation, he said we should always err on the side of life:
In an area such as this [the determination of death], in fact, there cannot be the slightest suspicion of arbitra[riness] and where certainty has not been attained the principle of precaution must prevail. … The principal criteria of respect for the life of the donator [donor] must always prevail so that the extraction of organs be performed only in the case of his/her true death. [emphasis added]
Moreover, in his 2000 Address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, Pope Saint John Paul II unambiguously stated that moral certainty must exist that patients are truly dead before their vital organs are harvested:
Moral certainty is considered the necessary and sufficient basis for an ethically correct course of action. Only where such certainty exists, and where informed consent has already been given by the [organ] donor or the donor’s legitimate representatives, is it morally right to initiate the technical procedures required for the removal of organs for transplant. [emphasis added]
If we Catholics abide by the principle of precaution articulated by Pope Benedict XVI and the stipulation requiring moral certainty articulated by Pope Saint John Paul II, it is clear that we cannot support the practice of harvesting vital organs from “dead” donors. The HHS investigation revealed that many patients are wrongly determined to be “brain dead” and are unquestionably alive, by any standard.
Moreover, many Catholics argue that all “brain-dead” patients are alive. Until such time as safety is ensured and consensus achieved on the issue of “brain death,” we should cease harvesting organs from “dead” donors. Innocent lives depend on it.
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Next up: the “altruistic” push to so-called Medical Aid in Dying.
Someone’s supervisor saying “find a surgeon who will do it” is absurd. Transplant surgeons recover organs, and they don’t just pop out of the shadows to take it – they must have a patient who is on the national list who is an exact match and ready to receive it, and they often travel great distances for recovery surgery from the donor.
If you want to learn more about how this all actually works, learn about DCD – donation after circulatory death. Nearly 50% of organ donations are of this kind (the rest being brain death), and DCD is truly after real heart-stops-beating death occurs because the patient/donor’s family decides to withdraw medical therapy (ie: “pull the plug”). And guess who proclaims death at a hospital… Hint: not the OPO or the transplant surgeon. It is the ICU physician and hospital care team who have nothing to gain.
So here is the process: Ventilator removed. Wait to see if the patient survives. If they do, then they go back to ICU care. If they die, then the doctor waits some mandatory amount of time (5 minutes or so) and if the patient remains dead, THEN death is pronounced. After that, and only after that, can organ recovery surgery take place.
But get this – timing is critical. Once someone stops breathing/heartbeat (something that had been supported by a ventilator), their organs stop receiving important oxygen. So yes, at that point organ recovery surgery is a very intense process that must happen quickly… to save lives of those waiting on an organ. Yay life!
The “concerning cases” cited by CMS are all cases in which organ donation DID NOT happen, generally because that person did not die when the ventilator was removed, even though a doctor expected them to die. But, lots of things are put in place IN CASE that patient dies, in an effort to – you guessed it – save lives. So when you see “organ donation was initiated,” ask yourself what that means… It does not mean the patient was cut open while still alive. It means there was a conversation with the family and preparations in place to recover organs in the circumstance that the patient actually would die.
Organ donation is a highly-regulated, complex process with lots of players and moving pieces. Much of the reporting about “concerning cases” only skims the surface, getting clicks from those who see something scary but don’t know enough to even ask the right questions. Or in some cases, people share opinion pieces without really knowing how this stuff works. These were likely all DCD cases, not brain death cases.
Buncomb. You don’t take viable organs from a dead person. You have to keep the heart pumping while taking the organs. (Yay, life!)
This whole business is murky at best. I’d like more info on outcomes, quality of organs at time of transplantation, etc
I agree Romy. They should at least be honest about the process so people can be informed.
Thank you very much for your factual comments.
Thank you for your comment. I suffered from a rare liver disease – PSC – for twelve years and in 1999 I received an organ. Our daughter suffered from two auto-immune diseases that resulted in a double lung transplant this past year. Nothing in my experience with the entire transplant process and being around transplant doctors resembles the story told by this doctor.
When I received my transplant, I felt guilty due to the cost of the transplant itself. I was a member of an insurance cooperative, and I knew that this expense would tax the system. However, my transplant coordinator assured me that the program planned for these events and expected some of its members to need transplants.
I have no doubt that mistakes or errors happen. However, I am confident that they are exceptions to the rule rather than the norm. Neither our daughter, a young mother of three children, or I lived in such a way as to encourage the diseases we suffered from. Upon my death, I will be a donor. If my body can assist in the health of another and remove their suffering, I am all for it. More importantly, I am completely confident in the donor system.
Your “complete confidence” I am envious of. I’ve had the donor sticker on my driver’s license since age 16, but I’ve read too many stories like the above that are now giving me pause. The Epoch Times has reported extensively on similar accusations, mostly as it relates to the CCP harvesting from “live cadavers” like Falun Gong protestors or others considered CCP dissidents or undesirables. This stuff spills over to other cultures, perhaps under the table radar. There’s a lot of money involved, including reimbursements from governments and insurance companies, and it’s likely a given that a manager is under intense pressure to achieve transplants or organ sales to transplant facilities etc… The whole business is not as pure as it used to be with TV cameras zeroed in on the hero doctor racing with the lemonade cooler to the waiting helicopter on the roof of the hospital with a recently harvested heart.
When my elderly mother died at home the nurse had to hook an EKG? up for 8 minutes with no response, before calling the time.
Is an autopsy a “moral” form of organ harvesting? Most physicians determine the state of mortality in the presence of the family. How does a DNR complicate the process?
Pray that the medical decision receives moral attention to determine the conclusive state of death.
“What I Found Out About Organ Donation Shocked Me”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/opinion/organ-donation-system-ethics-trust.html
“I spent years asking people to register as organ donors. I look forward to the day
when I can add my own name back to the list. But first, the government needs to
make the system worthy of that trust.”
Organ donation proponents openly acknowledge the systemic corruption and disregard for safety of organ procurement organizations.