Issue #19 | April 2026

Welcome to the Science in Donation & Transplant Newsletter!

Three new and informative articles in this issue:

1. Preventing Organ Donation Disruption: SID&T Policy Brief

2. Save More Lives Stop Rejecting Useable Organs

3. Organ Law Protects Donors

Preventing Organ Donation Disruption: SID&T Policy Brief

Peer-reviewed studies, published in leading medical journals, have evaluated the CMS OPO performance metric and reached startling conclusions:  The CMS metric is statistically unstable. It misranks OPOs 20–50% of the time.  is biased against large OPOs. It relies on an inaccurate denominator. Risks decertification of well-performing OPOs, service disruption, reduced donation capacity and creates risk to transplant …

Save More Lives Stop Rejecting Useable Organs

Two recent studies examining what happened after HRSA restricted Allocation Out of Sequence (AOOS) beginning in August 2025 found that the decline in AOOS was associated with fewer kidneys being recovered. The New York Times and some at HRSA falsely portray AOOS—as a sign that the transplant system is being rigged. Wrong. Restriction is keeping organs from patients …

Organ Law Protects Donors

Organ donation operates in a narrow clinical window, measured in hours. Introducing uncertainty about whether families can revisit or reinterpret a donor’s decision would effectively give veto power to third parties—precisely what organ donation law has sought to prevent …

Discover SID&T on Your Favorite Social Media Platforms

Did you know that we post regularly across a series of popular social media platforms? Give us a follow and join us as we share updates from the news, Washington D.C., and debunk bad science and misinformation on OPOs, and organ donation and transplantation.

Science in Donation and Transplant is a non-profit established in November 2020 devoted to improving OPOs performance and placing patient results above politics.

Our goal is to ensure that the metrics and measures used to credential, license, designate and certify donation and transplant organizations are grounded in science and protected from political whim and private financial influence.