HHS cuts ties with group that supported organ harvesting of living patient

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announces the decertification of Network for Hope, the organ procurement company responsible for the case of TJ Hoover, who was taken for organ procurement surgery while still alive.

Written by Heidi Klessig MD and originally published on LifeSite News on August 6, 2026. Read the original article here.

On August 5, 2026, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Network for Hope (formerly known as Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates) is being decertified due to “persistent patient safety failures despite repeated oversights, repeated warnings, corrective action plans, and multiple opportunities to improve.”

In 2021, Network for Hope was responsible for the case of TJ Hoover, a man admitted to Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond, Kentucky following a drug overdose. Hoover’s prognosis for recovery was poor, so his family decided to remove him from life support. But because Hoover was a registered organ donor, Network for Hope began assessing him for organ harvesting instead.

Because Hoover had suffered a cardiac arrest during his overdose, Network for Hope scheduled him to undergo a cardiac catheterization to see if his heart was still in good enough shape to put into someone else. But Hoover was grabbing the doctors’ hands and moving around so much during the procedure that he had to be given a paralyzing drug to successfully complete the test.

His family was told his signs of life were merely "reflexes"

During his “honor walk” on the way to the operating room to donate his organs, Hoover was moving again. He was tracking people with his eyes and even made eye contact with his sister, Donna Rhorer. When she pointed this out to Network for Hope personnel, she was told that these were merely “reflexes.”

But organ preservationist Natasha Miller also thought Hoover looked alive. “He was moving around – kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” said Miller in an NPR interview. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was visibly crying.” 

After doctors refused to remove TJ Hoover’s organs, the organ procurement coordinator called her supervisor for instructions. According to Donna Rhorer, the coordinator was told, “Find another surgeon or you’ll lose your job because we’re finishing this case.”

Thankfully, another surgeon could not be found, and Hoover was able to recover and return home. His sister was told to make his final days comfortable, but in spite of continuing health struggles Hoover is still very much alive. He even remembers what happened to him, asking his sister, “Why did they want to kill me?”

But instead of changing their policies following the Hoover case, Network for Hope doubled down. A whistleblower from Network for Hope described their organization’s debrief session to me in this way:

“Throughout the entire debrief, no matter what question was asked or what concern was raised, leadership repeated the same thing. They insisted they had done nothing wrong. They said they would do everything exactly the same again if given the chance. There was no willingness to reflect, reconsider, or acknowledge that anything might need to change.”

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ public notice of decertification, Network for Hope will have a chance to appeal this decision. Failing that appeal, the Donation Service Area for Network for Hope will be competitively offered to other organ procurement organizations (OPOs). This is what happened last year when HHS decertified the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a south Florida OPO which RFK Jr. said had a long record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm. Following decertification, the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency was replaced in January of 2026 by another OPO, the Nevada Donor Network.

Organ donors are not spiritually, biologically, or legally dead

Removing Network for Hope’s certification was absolutely necessary, but will not address the most pressing problem underlying our current organ donation system: organ donors must be biologically alive in order to donate viable organs.

“Brain dead” donors are neurologically injured, not dead. There is no evidence that their souls have departed. They are definitely biologically still alive: they have beating hearts, absorb nutrition and excrete waste, heal their wounds, fight infections, and even deliver healthy babies.

And in the United States, brain dead people are not even legally dead. This is because the Uniform Determination of Death Act defines neurological death as “the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain including the brain stem.” But the American Academy of Neurology’s brain death guideline (way doctors actually diagnose brain death) does not adhere to the law – it explicitly allows people with ongoing brain function to be declared dead. It has long been known that 20% of people with a “brain death” diagnosis still have brain waves on their electroencephalograms (EEGs), and over 50% still have a functioning hypothalamus which is part of the brain.

And donors after controlled circulatory death (DCD) are not known to be dead at the time their organs are procured. This type of donation is rising rapidly in the US, accounting for 49% of donations last year, as compared to just 2% in the year 2000. In the DCD scenario, people don’t need to be brain dead, they just need to have a poor prognosis. Organ procurement personnel then approach families preaching doom and gloom, saying “your loved one wouldn’t want to live this way,” and recommending organ donation.

DCD donors are given a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order, because although they could be resuscitated, a decision has been made not to do so. Thus, neither do their deaths comply with US law under the UDDA, which requires the “irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory function.” The person is taken to the operating room and their support is withdrawn. Once pulselessness is achieved, doctors observe a 2-5 minute waiting period to be sure there is no spontaneous return of circulation before beginning to operate as quickly as possible, since organs rapidly become non-viable in the absence of circulation.

But everyone knows that people are routinely able to be resuscitated after just 2-5 minutes of pulselessness -- and if you could still be resuscitated, you were never dead. This is why some DCD donors have self-resuscitated on the operating room table during the removal of their organs. For example, when surgeons sawed DCD donor Misty Hawkins’ breastbone open, they found that her heart had resumed beating and that she was gasping for breath.

Brain dead donors are not dead, and DCD donors are not known to be dead at the time their organs are procured. In 2009, Drs. Verheijde, Rady, and McGregor wrote that our current organ donation system is “de facto a concealed practice of physician-assisted death, and therefore, violates both criminal law and the central tenet of medicine not to harm patients.” And a recent New England Journal of Medicine article actually suggested that we make our current covert system of killing people via organ harvesting overt, calling for explicit “death by donation.”

Our organ donation system is broken, and decertifying another OPO will not fix it. But unlike many of our current problems, there is actually something ordinary people can do about this: refuse to be a registered organ donor.