Kentucky man’s organs were almost harvested. Then the doctors realized he was still alive

Organs from a Kentucky donor who had been declared dead were ready to be harvested — but then doctors made a surprising discovery: He was still alive.

“He was moving — kind of flailing. Like, moving, thrashing around in the bed,” Natasha Miller, an organ preserver in the operating room during the alarming October 2021 incident, told NPR. “And then when we went over there, you could see he was crying. He was visibly crying.”

Miller, who works at Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), told the outlet that two doctors refused to perform organ retrieval after realizing the donor had been wrongfully declared dead.

“The purchasing surgeon said, ‘I’m out of this. I don’t want anything to do with this,’” Miller said. “It was very chaotic. Everyone was very upset.”

The patient was 36-year-old Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, who had been admitted to Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Kentucky earlier that day after a drug overdose, his sister Donna Rhorer told the outlet.

Rhorer remembered a pang of worry as his brother was being wheeled from the intensive care unit to an operating room. She remembers seeing him open his eyes, which then began to dart around the room.

“It was like his way of letting us know, you know, ‘Hey, I’m still here,'” Rhorer told NPR.

In the operating room, Miller remembered the case coordinator calling her supervisor at KODA for help as soon as they saw signs of life. The supervisor insisted that the case coordinator needed to “find another doctor to do this,” Miller recalled.

Ultimately, the organ retrieval was cancelled. Hoover now lives with Rhorer, his legal guardian.

Hoover is safe, but the shocking moment stuck with KODA workers, some of whom quit after the incident.

“I dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplantation. It’s very scary to me now that these things can happen and there are no more measures to protect donors,” organ preservationist Nyckoletta Martin told NPR.

Although she was not in the operating room, she told the outlet that she had reviewed the case file because there was a chance she had been assigned to perform the procedure.

Earlier that day, the donor had undergone a cardiac catheterization, used to assess heart health before or after a transplant.

“The donor woke up during the procedure that morning for a cardiac catheterization. And he was struggling on the table,” Martin said. But then, doctors sedated the patient and continued planning to recover his organs, she added.

“This is everyone’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to open you up and remove parts of your body? Martin told NPR. “This is horrible.”

She was so horrified that Martin wrote a letter to Congress detailing the incident. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing on September 11 on oversight of organ transplants. The committee alluded to Hoover’s case – and a witness shared that Hoover, while in the operating room, allegedly uttered the words: “Help me.”

“Several of us who were employees needed therapy. It affected a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.

Baptist Health Richmond Hospital sent a statement to The Independent: “The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure that our patients’ wishes regarding organ donation are met.”

Meanwhile, KODA maintains that the allegations that have emerged in the case are not accurate. A spokesperson told the outlet: “No one at KODA has ever been pressured to harvest organs from any living patient.” The spokesperson added: “KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do this.”

The Independent reached out to KODA for comment.

This alleged near-miss incident is not independent.

At the congressional hearing in September, a witness, Dr. Robert Cannon, surgical director of the liver transplant program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told the committee: “Unfortunately, I have experienced this myself.” This incident did not involve KODA and did not happen in Kentucky, he said.

A harvest donor was declared brain dead, and midway through the operation an anesthesiologist said he believed the patient was breathing, “which would essentially negate the declaration of brain death,” Dr. Cannon said. The team then called the administrator, who attributed it to a “brain stem reflex” and recommended they proceed, “which, of course, would have been murder if we had done that,” he said.

“Every transplant surgeon probably has a story of their own or that of a colleague who has experienced something like this,” Dr. Cannon told the committee.

There are more than 103,000 people on the transplant waiting list.

The Biden administration has announced plans to reform the organ procurement system, including “increasing transparency and accountability,” the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) said in March 2023.

HRSA is “investigating these allegations” but could not comment further, a spokesperson said. told The Independent in a statement.

The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is also investigating the case. State AG Russell Coleman said The Independent in a statement: “Our office has been in contact with advocates and members of the Kentucky federal delegation regarding this horrific allegation. In collaboration with our Kentucky law enforcement partners and prosecutors, we will continue to analyze the facts to identify an appropriate response.”

Since leaving the hospital, Hoover has had trouble remembering, walking and talking, Rhorer told NPR.

The incident still disturbs her.

“I feel betrayed by the fact that the people who told us he was brain dead and then woke up,” Rhorer said. “They are trying to play God. They’re almost, you know, picking and choosing – they’re going to take this person and save them. And you kind of lose faith in humanity a little bit.”