>>21653216 Transplant industry whistleblower claims she was pressured to harvest organs from a person who was still ALIVE
Transplant industry whistleblower claims she was pressured to harvest organs from a person who was still ALIVE and fired after complaining
01:10 EDT 25 Sep 2024 By Alex Hammer1/2
A former employee of a nonprofit organ recovery group has claimed she was asked to harvest organs from a person who was still living - and then fired after airing her qualms to members of Congress.
Nyckoletta Martin, 38, made the latter revelations Tuesday to the Wall Street Journal, describing how she was let go by organ collection group KentuckyOrgan Donor Affiliates on September 13.
Days before, a letter she wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee was read and discussed on the House floor, after it alleged that there is currently outsized pressure on organ collectors.
Singling out the organ-procurement group in Kentucky where she worked, she recalled =being pressured to retrieve organs from a patient before he died - while he was awake==. He later left the facility alive, Martin said - choosing not to name him.
Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, abbreviated KODA, is one of 56 federally chartered nonprofits tasked with procuring organs for transplant. A spokesperson said the firm 'strictly adheres' to laws and national guidelines set in place by the US government.
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'What is clear to me from my time atKODA is that the [organ procurement organization] does not operate in patients' interests,' Martin, a mom-of-five, wrote in the letter sent to the committee.
'[The group] regularly engages in unethical activities for the sole purpose of trying to keep its lucrative government contract,' she added.
The letter went on to claim that whena surgeon refused an officials' order, Martin and other workers were ordered to find a different surgeon who would do it willingly.
They refused as well, she said - allowing the patient to later leave alive after he recovered.
The patient's condition and malady was not made clear by what was read, as other statements sent by alleged witnesses saying they have witnessed similar activity were read as well.
All insisted that procurement groups in various states - like KODA - have begun to push workers and surgeons to take organs from patients who were still alive.
A liver transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Robert Cannon, told the committee how he was allegedly told toprocure organs from a spontaneously breathing patient, which he said 'would have been murder.'
Greg Segal, head of an advocacy group that seeks to reform the organ procurement process, alleged another Organ Procurement Organization(OPO) had given potential organ donors doses of fentanyl to hasten their deaths.
He did not provide any evidence to support those claims, as was the case with Martin, who is a mother of five.
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