Ontario Bill 4: We oppose presumed consent for organ donation.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Please sign and share our petition opposing Ontario Bill 4: Peter Kormos Memorial Act. (Petition Link).

Ontario NDP MLA France Gélinas introduced Bill 4 on April 16, 2025. Bill 4 has not yet been debated in the Ontario legislature. Bill 4 states:

The Gift of Life Act currently requires that consent be obtained before tissue can be removed from a human body and used for therapeutic purposes, medical education or scientific research. Under the proposed amendments, consent is no longer required except from parents or guardians on behalf of children under 16 years of age. A person may object to the removal and use of the tissue prior to the person’s death or a substitute may object on the person’s behalf after the death has occurred.

Bill 4 would change The Gift of Life Act (Ontario), which requires consent to obtain organs and tissues and replaces it with presumed consent. The Ontario government would consider you to be an organ donor unless you have stated otherwise.

Bill 4 also changes the Connecting Care Act 2019 for the planning, co-ordinating, undertaking, supporting and promoting of activities relating to the removal, donation and use of human tissue, including the co-ordinating and supporting of designated facilities in connection with the removal and use of human tissue for transplant.

Please sign and share the following petition (Petition Link).

To the Hon Sylvia Jones, Ontario Minister of Health

As a citizen of Ontario I oppose Bill 4, Peter Kormos Memorial Act (Saving Organs to Save Lives). This bill that would institute a system of presumed consent for organ donation in Ontario.

A study by the US Department of Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that 103 of the cases may have violated the dead donor rule.

The government does not own my organs. I consider organ donation as a voluntary gift of life that is made after I have died. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports the Dead Donor rule, meaning, the person must be dead before organs can be removed from a person. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition calls for a re-affirmation of the dead donor rule and rejects a presumed consent for organ donation.

On July 23 we published an article about The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) media release concerning the American organ transplant system. The HHS examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 cases their were concerns that either ethics or the dead donor rule was violated.

In 2023, an effort to legitimize harvesting organs from living people was prevented when The Uniform Law Commission stopped an effort to revise the UDDA. The revision to the UDDA would have redefined death to permit organ removal when a person, is not yet dead but has an irreversible condition.

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 America.

Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 of the cases the dead donor rule may have been 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.

HHS Found Systemic Disregard for Organ Donation Dead Donor rule.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Previous article: Organ Procurement Organization lapses threaten trust in transplant medicine (Link).

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.

I have been writing about issues related to organ donation for many years based on the fact that organ donors are not always dead before organs are retrieved. Death is sometimes caused by organ removal rather than organs being removed from a dead person.

In 2023, an effort to legitimize harvesting organs from living people was prevented when the Uniform Law Commission stopped the effort to revise the UDDA. The revision to the UDDA was designed to give legal cover when organs are taken from people who have not yet died but have an irreversible condition.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports the dead donor rule.

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

Link to the Health and Human Services media release (Link).

HHS Finds Systemic Disregard for Sanctity of Life in Organ Transplant System

Secretary Kennedy Threatens Closure of Deficient Organ Procurement Organization

WASHINGTON—July 21, 2025— The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the leadership of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. today announced a major initiative to begin reforming the organ transplant system following an investigation by its Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that revealed disturbing practices by a major organ procurement organization.

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy said. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

HRSA directed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to reopen a disturbing case involving potentially preventable harm to a neurologically injured patient by the federally-funded organ procurement organization (OPO) serving Kentucky, southwest Ohio, and part of West Virginia. Under the Biden administration, the OPTN’s Membership and Professional Standards Committee closed the same case without action.

Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HRSA demanded a thorough, independent review of the OPO’s conduct and the treatment of vulnerable patients under its care. HRSA’s independent investigation revealed clear negligence after the previous OPTN Board of Directors claimed to find no major concerns in their internal review.

HRSA examined 351 cases where organ donation was authorized, but ultimately not completed. It found:

• 103 cases (29.3%) showed concerning features, including 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.
• Evidence pointed to poor neurologic assessments, lack of coordination with medical teams, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death, particularly in overdose cases.

Vulnerabilities were highest in smaller and rural hospitals, indicating systemic gaps in oversight and accountability. In response to these findings, HRSA has mandated strict corrective actions for the OPO, and system-level changes to safeguard potential organ donors nationally. The OPO must conduct a full root cause analysis of its failure to follow internal protocols—including noncompliance with the five-minute observation rule after the patient’s death—and develop clear, enforceable policies to define donor eligibility criteria. Additionally, it must adopt a formal procedure allowing any staff member to halt a donation process if patient safety concerns arise.

Secretary Kennedy will decertify the OPO if it fails to comply with these corrective action requirements [PDF].

HRSA also took action to make sure that patients across the country will be safer when donating organs by directing the OPTN to improve safeguards and monitoring at the national level. Under HRSA’s directive, data about any safety-related stoppages of organ donation called for by families, hospitals, or OPO staff must be reported to regulators, and the OPTN must update policies to strengthen organ procurement safety and provide accurate, complete information about the donation process to families and hospitals.

These findings from HHS confirm what the Trump administration has long warned: entrenched bureaucracies, outdated systems, and reckless disregard for human life have failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS is restoring integrity and transparency to organ procurement and transplant policy by putting patients’ lives first. These reforms are essential to restoring trust, ensuring informed consent, and protecting the rights and dignity of prospective donors and their families.

HHS recognizes House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie’s (KY-02) bipartisan work to improve the organ transplant system and looks forward to working with him and other issue-area champions in Congress to deliver reforms.

More articles about this topic:

• Euthanasia turning suicidal people into 'Kill and Harvest' natural resource (Link). 
• Let's not get rid of the Dead Donor rule (Link).
• No to Killing for Organs (Link).
• Canada leads the world in organ donation after euthanasia (Link).