Latest news with #organharvesting
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Terrifying hospital loophole that allows doctors to remove your organs while you're still ALIVE
As Anthony Thomas 'TJ' Hoover II was wheeled into surgery to harvest his organs, his eyes flitted back and forth and began to open. Despite doctors declaring the 36-year-old dead, Hoover's brain was becoming more and more active- and as he was taken into the Kentucky operating room, he began thrashing on the bed and crying, patient records show, and was very much alive. Doctors halted the surgery only after arguing with the team responsible for procuring Hoover's organs, who wanted to continue anyway. Hoover's case prompted a years-long federal investigation into Kentucky's organ donation procurement nonprofit, whose team reportedly scrambled to find a surgeon willing to harvest the organs of a living man when the first surgeon backed out. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) investigation delved into about 350 cases involving Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA) in which plans for organ retrievals were ultimately scrapped because declared-dead patients began waking up. In 73 cases, federal investigators found organ harvesting should have been stopped sooner as patients showed improving consciousness and signs of pain or distress, according to the New York Times. While most patients are deemed eligible to donate organs after being declared brain dead, these patients had experienced circulatory death - when the heart stops functioning and blood and oxygen no longer circulate in the body. Opponents of donation after circulatory death (DCD) argue the practice has looser criteria for declaring someone dead, leading to the potential for someone who is not definitively dead being taken off of life-sustaining measures for premature donation. DCD has been steadily becoming more common over the years, and involves recovering organs after the heart stops, though some brain activity may remain. Traditionally, most organ donations come from patients declared brain dead, the complete and irreversible loss of all brain function - though patients may be hooked up to machines that keep the heart and lungs working. Because heart and lung function is maintained with machines, organs remain viable for transplant. With circulatory death, death is declared when circulation and respiratory function has stopped - even though they haven't been declared brain dead. When hospitals identify patients nearing death who might be eligible donors, they notify organ procurement organizations (OPOs) such as KODA. An OPO representative then visits the hospital to assess whether the patient shows signs of imminent brain death. If brain death is unlikely but the patient cannot survive without life support and the family is considering withdrawing care, the case may be appropriate for DCD. In these situations, the OPO works closely with the family and medical team to coordinate end-of-life plans and organ donation. DCD helps increase the number of available donors, offering hope to more than 103,000 Americans waiting for life-saving heart, kidney, lung, and other organ transplants. But the practice has proven to be an ethical minefield. While organ procurement organizations like KODA insist they do not harvest organs from live patients, federal officials and activists say Hoover's case was not a one-off. DCDs have become increasingly common as a way to meet the needs of a growing number of people on national waiting lists. The number of organs recovered from DCD Donors in 1993 was 112. By 2021, over 10,000 recovered organs came from DCD donors. The federal inquiry into Kentucky's organ procurement practices began last fall when the House Energy and Commerce Committee learned of Hoover's experience. Hoover was rushed to the hospital after a drug overdose in October 2024. He was unresponsive in the hospital. For two days after Hoover's family agreed to donate his organs, KODA officers tested the man's organs and lined up transplant surgeons and recipients. During one exam on his heart, Hoover was 'thrashing on the bed,' according to patient records, and was sedated to prevent further motion. His sister, Donna Rhorer, remembered watching him being wheeled to the operating room as his eyes moved and tracked where his sister was, keeping his gaze in her direction. She and the rest of the family were told this was a common reflex. 'It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, "Hey, I'm still here,'' Rhorer told NPR. The hospital staff 'was extremely uncomfortable with the amount of reflexes patient is exhibiting,' case notes read. 'Hospital staff kept stating that this was euthanasia.' A procurement organization coordinator assured them it was not. A former KODA employee told the New York Times that had it not been for that doctor who called off the procedure, 'we absolutely 1,000 percent would have moved forward.' Natasha Miller, who used to work for KODA as an organ preservationist, told NPR last year that, at the time, the organ procurement case coordinator was scrambling with her boss about what to do next as Hoover thrashed and cried. Miller said: '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.' 'And she's like, 'There is no one else.' She's crying — the coordinator — because she's getting yelled at.' Three other former KODA employees have attested to seeing similar cases. Patients are typically taken to the operating room, where doctors remove them from life support and wait for the natural dying process to wrap up. The organs are only transplantable if the patient dies within an hour or two. Strict rules are in place barring any procedure from beginning before a patient dies. But the HRSA investigation, as reported by the Times, shows that KODA employees repeatedly pressured families to green-light organ harvesting, improperly took over cases from doctors, and tried to push hospital staff to pull patients from life support even amid indications that patients were becoming more aware of their surroundings. KODA employees also failed to recognize that hospital-administered sedatives or illegal drugs could mask a patient's actual neurological condition, making them appear in worse shape than they are. In another case, in December 2022, a 50-year-old man who had suffered an overdose began stirring in his bed less than an hour after being removed from life support. He woke up and started looking around. The retrieval attempt was not immediately scrapped nor was the patient given any explanation as to what was going on, 'but was becoming more aware by the minute,' a doctor's notes said. The attempt wasn't called off for another 40 minutes, the point at which his organs were no longer viable. In the ICU, he was awake and speaking with his family, though the patient died three days later. KODA, now Network for Hope after a merger, said it 'is disappointed in the New York Times story that declines to include factual clarifications and critical context about organ and tissue donation. 'Network for Hope remains committed to transparency and to the mission of saving lives. That commitment has not changed. The only people hurt by inaccuracies in journalism are those who are awaiting a second chance for life. 'Network for Hope is in full compliance with all requirements of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). We are fully committed to transparency and accountability to their regulations regarding Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) donation.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
The six-year-old albino boy whose hand was hacked off by his FATHER to make potions for witchdoctors in Tanzania
A band of armed men storm into the house of a six-year-old boy in the dead of night. They knock his terrified mother unconscious before bursting into the child's bedroom, hauling him from his cot and pinning him to the ground. Then one member of the group - the boy's own father - steps forward with a machete and mercilessly swings it down to sever the boy's hand. They gleefully make off with the body part, leaving the child screaming and bleeding in his empty bedroom. No, this is not the plot of a Stephen King novel or a skin-crawling horror film. This is the lived experience of Baraka Cosmas Lusambo, one of hundreds of people with albinism (PWAs) across Central and East Africa who became unwilling organ donors at the hands of people who believe their body parts can cure afflictions or bring good fortune. Albinos - sometimes referred to as 'the invisibles' - have historically suffered appalling treatment in parts of the African continent. Not long ago, albino babies were routinely killed at birth, thought by their parents to be bad omens or curses. Today, infanticide has largely declined, but many PWAs are born with a price tag on their head. Even people born without albinism but with particularly fair skin and eyes risk a similar fate. Last week, the guilty verdict handed down last week to a South African woman who sold her bright-eyed daughter to a witch doctor in February 2024 renewed focus on the dark trade of human trafficking and the targeting of young children for profit. But PWAs like Baraka are ever more susceptible to the deplorable practice. There are countless horror stories across East and Central African nations of albino children and adults alike being butchered - sometimes by their own relatives - and their remains used in macabre concoctions. Bones are ground down and buried in the earth by miners, who believe they will be transformed into diamonds. The genitals are made into treatments to bolster sexual potency, and their hair is woven into fishermen's nets. Nowhere are these practices more rife than Tanzania, where roughly one in 1,400 people are born with albinism - the highest incidence of the condition anywhere in the world. In Baraka's case, his injuries came about after a 17-person-strong gang led by his father, Cosmas Lusambo, and his uncle stormed into his house and hacked off his hand with a machete. His lower leg was also badly injured in the attack but doctors were able to save it. The group reportedly sold the child's bloodied and battered body part on the open market for $5,000 - a huge sum in a country where the average wage in 2016 was the equivalent of $157 per month. Though Baraka will contend with the trauma for the rest of his life, reports about his vile ordeal caught the eye of the Global Medical Relief Fund, a charity started by Staten Island woman Elissa Montanti in 1997 to help young people from crisis zones get custom prostheses. Baraka was one of five Tanzanian children treated in the US for their injuries sustained when they were attacked for their body parts Montanti reached out to Under the Same Sun, a Canada-based group that advocates for and protects people with albinism in Tanzania that sheltered Baraka following the attack in March 2015. When Montanti asked if she could help him, the group said four more children who had been attacked for their organs were in need of care, and pleaded with the charity founder to consider providing new limbs for them as well. Montanti agreed and brought all five to live for the summer at her charity's home on Staten Island, while they underwent the process of getting fitted for and learning to use prostheses about two hours away at Philadelphia Shriners Hospital for Children. The cohort of kids spent five months of 2015 from June to October living with Montanti while undergoing prostheses fitting and rehabilitation at the hospital in Philadelphia. Between trips to the hospital, Montanti filled their summer with trips to various American landmarks, swimming pools, and the beach - activities that could have proven lethal in their native Tanzania. Montanti said at the time the children had become like her adopted kids, and that she had grown especially close to Baraka. 'They're not getting their arms back,' she said. 'But they are getting something that is going to help them lead a productive life and be part of society and not be looked upon as a freak or that they are less than whole.' The group of five children, including Baraka, returned to Tanzania in October 2015 and were looked after in secure sheltered accommodation in the city of Dar es Salaam. But they made frequent trips to and from Staten Island for new prostheses to accommodate their growing bodies. Baraka is now 16 years old. Montanti told MailOnline that he and his friends will return to Staten Island once again in August this year. Albinism is a condition caused by a genetic mutation that strips the skin, hair and eyes of pigment created by melanin, a substance that also acts as a shield against the sun's harmful ultraviolet light. The lack of protective melanin comes with heightened risks of skin cancer and vision loss for those exposed to the sun. Those born with it can generally live long, healthy lives provided they are appropriately looked after as children and have the provisions to protect themselves as adults. Unfortunately, this is not often the case in large parts of Africa. More than 90% of people with albinism on the continent, where roughly one out of every 5,000 people is born with the condition, die before they reach the age of 40 due to health complications brought on by sun exposure. In rural areas, PWAs are sometimes banned from working or going to school and are isolated by their communities - a move that makes them all the more vulnerable to bounty hunters, traffickers, witch doctors and impoverished citizens with nowhere else to turn. One of the most dangerous myths is that having sex with an albino can cure HIV. That belief has driven an epidemic of sexual violence against albino women, many of whom contract the virus as a result. PWAs are hunted, murdered, and dismembered. Children are kidnapped from their families, or in some cases sold off by willing parents desperate for money. Even in death, they are not safe. Grave robbers are known to desecrate the graves of PWAs to steal their bones. As attacks on PWAs became more widely reported after the turn of the century, governments and judiciaries have taken some steps to reduce the violence. In 2009, a Tanzanian court handed out death sentences to three men who were convicted of abducting and butchering 14-year-old albino boy Matatizo Dunia - the first time capital punishment was handed out for such a crime. The attackers broke into Dunia's home and dragged him out of his bed before hacking him to pieces. One was reportedly found holding his severed leg while the boy's dismembered corpse was discovered dumped in scrubland. But there are thought to be dozens if not hundreds of cases of attacks on PWAs that go uninvestigated or unreported altogether, and critics say many governments - including that of Tanzania - are doing little to change the violent trend. In February, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) delivered a landmark judgment against the Tanzanian government after civil rights groups successfully argued officials were committing human rights violations by failing to prosecute attacks against PWAs. The ruling decreed that the government must launch a years-long public awareness campaign, criminalise attacks against PWAs and increase healthcare provisions for albinos those with skin and eye problems. It came after the UN last year condemned Tanzanian authorities for their failure to condemn and investigate attacks against PWAs after examining multiple cases of mutilation which were either not investigated, or had prosecutions withdrawn. It remains to be seen whether the ACHPR's ruling will have any effect on the Tanzanian government's policies, given that there is no official method to enforce the court's decisions. Tanzania is just one of several nations where violence against PWAs is rife. The past two decades have seen dozens of cases of PWA mutilations and killings in neighbouring Kenya, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), among others.
