It's Cheryl Ackison. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours.

Today, dead or alive? With a million dollars per body in play, some in Congress are asking whether some authorities are too quick to declare an organ donor to be dead.

You're in for another fascinating topic this week. Since 1988, more than a half million U.S.

organ donors have made 1.1 million transplants possible. 170 million Americans are registered donors, yet more than 100,000 people, still wait.

Organ procurement organizations, OPO's, are non-profits, kind of middlemen, tasked with

managing, removal, and transfer.

But major investigations and insider whistleblowers have exposed some disturbing

cases involving the gift of life. Take the alarming case of T.J. Hoover in 2021. Hoover was declared

brain dead after a drug overdose. In the hospital, as an organ donor, he was prepped for organ donation, but repeatedly

showed signs of life. According to a whistleblower, then with the Kentucky organ donor affiliates,

this was in Kentucky, the Kentucky organ donor affiliates are CODA, T.J. woke up during a process. The whistleblower says the process

of checking his heart for suitability for donation. He was paralyzed and sedated when he woke up,

taken back to ICU and the family never told what happened, never told that he woke up.

T.J. Hoover was still pushed toward organ removal. According to the whistleblower, during that honor walk that you may see sometimes on

video where organ donors are wheeled through the hospital on their way to the procedure,

during his honor walk, T.J. says the whistleblower woke up even more.

It was more responsive, tracking with his eyes looking around. But the family was told by the

representative with the Kentucky organ donor affiliates or CODA that this was just reflexes.

The whistleblower said that's not true. He was waking up. She says when they got him to the

OR, TJ was pulling his knees up to his chest, crying, trying to pull out his tubes,

visibly upset and aware of what was going on. What happened then, she says, doctors administered

morphine to calm him down, and there were moves to go ahead and continue.

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