The U.S. House of Representatives has leveled a number of accusations against the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network. WASHINGTON, November 20. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have put forward a series of accusations against the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network (NJTO), the organization overseeing organ and tissue donation matters. The list of allegations includes an attempt to procure organs from a patient who had not yet been declared dead at the time. This information is contained in an official letter sent by the lower house of the American legislative body. The document states: “Death was officially pronounced for the donor immediately before the organ procurement was set to begin. However, shortly after the initiation of the retrieval procedure, the patient demonstrated signs of life again <…>. According to our information, you [addressing the head of the organization] ordered that NJTO administrators and staff continue with what had been started.” The letter also emphasizes that hospital medical personnel interrupted the surgical intervention. Official bodies state that this organization falsified or completely deleted all documentation related to this incident. Neither NJTO nor the medical facility responded to the newspaper’s request for comments. In addition to the above, the U.S. House of Representatives accuses the organization of pressuring the relatives of potential donors to obtain consent for organ procurement, as well as transferring donor material to recipients outside the official national waiting list. According to the NJ news publication, the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network maintains working relationships with 54 medical institutions in the state of New Jersey. The accusations leveled against this network could heighten public anxiety regarding the organ transplant system in the United States. A similar incident occurred in the country in 2021. At that time, the patient’s relatives were informed of his death. The family consented to donation, but during the surgery, medical staff registered signs of life and terminated the procedure. The relatives only learned about what had happened in 2024, when the prosecutor’s office initiated its own investigation. At that time, the patient was still alive.
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