KY lawmakers want new rules to make sure organ donors are dead during retrievals
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- House committee approves HB 510 to require organ donation pause if signs of life appear.
- If paused, the doctors — not the organ retrieval nonprofit — must determine death.
- Pauses must be documented and reported to state and federal authorities.
Kentucky is poised to place restrictions on organ removal after federal investigations last year raised alarms about organ donors who showed signs of revival as retrievals began, including 103 cases over four years highlighted by federal officials.
The House Committee on Health Services on Thursday unanimously approved House Bill 510 to create rules for an immediate “pause in procedure” during the organ donation process at a hospital if any participants, including the donors’ spouse or legal representative, believed they saw an “indication of life.”
These indications include spontaneous movement, attempts to breathe or make a noise, response to stimuli or pain perception, or changes in heart rate or blood pressure inconsistent with dying.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, proceeds to the House floor.
“Every day, hundreds of Kentuckians are waiting for an organ. House Bill 510 assures that every Kentuckian who is given that choice, the choice of a gift, shall be honored with integrity and trust,” Addia Wuchner, a former state representative and now executive director of Kentucky Right to Life, told the committee.
“Where there is uncertainty, there is a pause. When death is confirmed and confirmed with certainty, the donation may proceed,” Wuchner said.
Barry Massa, chief executive of Network for Hope, the federally designated organ procurement organization in Kentucky, told lawmakers his nonprofit already has adopted the safety precautions in the House bill.
“We’re here to support this bill because we want to rebuild public trust in the organ tissue and donation system, and we’re hoping that this is just one way to do so,” Massa said.
Last year, investigations by the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services studied 351 Kentucky organ retrieval cases from the past four years and raised questions in 103 that had “concerning features,” as federal officials put it.
Among them, 73 patients showed neurological signs incompatible with organ donation, and at least 28 may not have been dead at the time organ procurement began, according to DHHS.
Network for Hope — then operating under the name Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates — failed to respect family wishes, collaborate with patients’ medical teams and follow professional best medical practices, the agency said.
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement last July.
“The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable,” Kennedy said. “The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”
There were 284 surgical retrievals of organs from patients in Kentucky in 2025, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
The federal investigations — and the advancing Kentucky House bill — focus on an increasingly common practice called “donation after circulatory death.”
These donors are not brain-dead, as previously was typical, although they may be in a coma. Their hearts have stopped beating, however, and they are not expected to recover or survive if life-support is withdrawn.
Only after the treating physician declares them dead is the organ procurement organization allowed to enter the operating room.
However, in some cases, Kentucky organ retrievals nearly proceeded despite the patients showing signs of life, federal officials said.
In one Kentucky case highlighted in a March 2025 federal investigative report, senior staff at Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates directed a retrieval to continue despite “clear signs of life at multiple points” that upset doctors and nurses in the operating room, federal officials wrote.
“Hospital staff was extremely uncomfortable with the amount of reflexes patient is exhibiting,” according to a case summary included in the investigative report. “Hospital staff kept stating that this was euthanasia and [organ retrieval organization employee] explained to them that it is not.”
The operation only stopped because the surgeon refused to cooperate, federal officials wrote.
A person who later reported what happened in the operating room that day was fired from their job after the organ retrieval organization complained to their employer, federal officials wrote.
Under the state House bill, nobody could be penalized for requesting a pause in procedure.
If a pause was requested, the medical team would be in charge, not the organ procurement organization. Retrieval would not continue unless the medical team determined either brain death or circulatory death. Life support and other care could not be withheld solely to smooth the way for organ retrieval.
All pauses in procedure would be documented and reported to the federal and state governments.
