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The Highwire with Del Bigtree

HARVESTED ALIVE?

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

Health & Fitness, News, Society & Culture

4.93.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The organ donation system is under intense scrutiny after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services directed the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to investigate America’s organ procurement practices. The probe uncovered alarming findings, including nearly 30% of reviewed cases showing serious concerns—ranging from neurological signs inconsistent with organ donation eligibility to a shocking 28 patients who may not have been deceased at the time their organs were harvested.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Secretary Kennedy at HHS has been doing some really great work in some spaces and a lot of spaces here historically.

0:08.0

And one of those spaces, we've seen headlines like this just recently.

0:14.0

This is an issue in the Oregon procurement really space in the United States.

0:19.0

This is a big space. People need organs, life-saving organs

0:22.4

for a lot of situations that they have with their bodies, and a lot of people don't get them,

0:27.1

unfortunately. But there's a flip side to that. This headline from NPR kind of really puts

0:33.6

a finer point on this flip side. It says, horrifying mistake to take organs from a living

0:38.4

person was averted, witnesses say. It goes into this article here. We're going to go on the

0:43.1

high wire a little bit on this here. It says Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her

0:47.2

job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating

0:51.5

room. She quickly realized something wasn't right.

0:54.2

The donor had been declared dead.

0:57.0

He seemed to her very much alive.

0:59.0

He was moving around, she said, kind of thrashing, like moving, thrashing around in the

1:02.5

bed, Miller told NPR in an interview.

1:04.6

And then when we went over there, you could see she had had tears coming down.

1:11.5

He was crying visibly.

1:14.0

That's what's going on.

1:15.1

They pronounced him dead.

1:16.2

He was pronounced brain dead.

1:17.4

And they go in there.

1:18.4

And one of the things with organ harvesting is you can't take them from someone that's been

...

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