🏥 Federal report accuses NJ Sharing Network of shocking misconduct. 🏥 Accusations include an attempt to harvest organs from a live patient and deleting key evidence. 🏥 Nearly a dozen whistleblowers say top executives pressured hospital staff and manipulated documents A new report from the U. S. House Ways and Means Committee casts doubt on the ethics and integrity of the largest organ donation network in New Jersey. It’s the biggest controversy the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network has faced since its creation in 1987. The nonprofit could lose its federal designation as New Jersey’s organ procurement organization, as well as its tax-exempt status. In July, NJ Sharing Network spokesman Gary Mignone said to New Jersey 101. 5 that “Organ donation in New Jersey is safe, ethical, and highly regulated.” However, federal lawmakers now accuse the nonprofit of “egregious actions” that could further undercut faith in organ donation and potentially violate federal law. Mignone did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Whistleblowers describe serious misconduct by leadership The report released on Wednesday says it includes concerns from nearly a dozen whistleblowers, who provided documents to the Ways and Means Committee. The concerns focus primarily on NJ Sharing Network President and CEO Carolyn Welsh and other senior members of its executive team. Live-patient organ harvesting allegation shakes public trust The accusation that NJ Sharing Network executives wanted to harvest organs from a live patient echoes back to a horrifying July report from the New York Times. It brought attention to donations after circulatory death, or DCD. According to the report, organ procurement organizations harvested organs from patients who still had brain activity and heart activity. At the time, the NJ Sharing Network denied any similar accusations. It said that in New Jersey last year, there were 297 donors DCD accounted for 28% of organ donations and each followed a “highly regulated, hospital-led process.” But according to the U. S. House report, the NJ Sharing Network pressured hospital staff at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden to harvest organs from a patient. Pressure on hospital after a patient “reanimated” during organ harvesting The patient had been removed from life support for harvesting with consent from the family. The patient then reanimated as the organs were being harvested. The report said that Welsh, the nonprofit’s CEO, pressured a hospital administrator to continue with the harvesting procedure. However, hospital staff intervened and it was stopped. The NJ Sharing Network then performed a cover-up of the incident around the time that the New York Times was investigating claims of DCD abuse, the report said. Emails about this incident were deleted when the NJ Sharing Network’s servers were taken offline on July 13, 2025, according to federal lawmakers. Patients on the organ waitlist die after being skipped over Another accusation outlined in the report is that the NJ Sharing Network allocated 25% of its organs out of sequence. Patients are supposed to receive organ transplants based on their position in the national waitlist. However, the NJ Sharing Network is accused of violating that one-fourth of the time. More than 100 patients who were skipped remain on the list today, according to the report. Several of them died because they were skipped over. The NJ Sharing Network picked “winners and losers on the transplant waiting list” by ignoring laws and protocols, according to the report. Other shocking accusations include: 🔴 Harvesting organs from patients whose families were lied to about their organ donor status 🔴 Destroying documents, data manipulation, and lying to Congress during an inquiry 🔴 Discarding 100 pancreata in one day that were meant for research.
https://nj1015.com/new-jersey-organ-donation-scandal/