Newsweek article: Mass exodus from organ donation registries

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent out the following media release on July 21, 2025 concerning organ donation and the organ transplant system in the United States.

Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 of the cases the dead donor rule was likely violated. 

Organ donation is a difficult topic to write about since organ donation can save lives. I have written about issues related to organ donation for many years. It is a scandal that death is sometimes caused by organ removal rather than organs being retrieved from a dead donor.

Since then we have published three articles on the organ donation scandal (Article 1) (Article 2) (Article 3)

Joshua Rhett Miller reported for Newsweek on August 13 that the recent organ donation articles have led to an unprecedented mass exodus from organ donation registries. Miller wrote:

Thousands of Americans have removed themselves from organ donor registries following "irresponsible reporting" led by the New York Times, officials said.

The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), a trade group that represents 46 of the nation's 55 federally designated nonprofit entities that help facilitate donations, accused the newspaper of a "lack of balance and accuracy" in its recent coverage of the problems in the sprawling transplant system.

An AOPO letter stated that:

"These stories have directly led to the biggest increase in people removing themselves from donor registries ever recorded, putting patients waiting for transplants at greater risk,"

The AOPO letter claims both articles contained "serious factual inaccuracies."

Claims about factual inaccuracies don't negate the reality that the US Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and found:

• 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation.
• At least 28 patients may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated—raising serious ethical and legal questions.

There were also problems with poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death, particularly in overdose cases.

In other words, the AOPO should have monitored organ donation programs to prevent the scandal that has occurred. People support the dead donor rule. People are willing to donate their organs once they have died, but they do not want to die by donating their organs.

Last year the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition published an excellent article by lawyer, Sara Buscher titled: Let's not get rid of the Dead Donor Rule.

If the Dead Donor Rule is ignored or removed it results in people losing trust in the system and withdrawing their names from organ donation registries.