Issue #1 | Sept 22, 2022

Welcome to the first Science in Donation & Transplant newsletter! In this issue:

1. Calling on the Senate and House of Representatives to reject political theater and advance peer-reviewed science-based donation and transplant improvements. (NASEM)

2. Protecting the non-profit organ donation system from privateers

Keep Congress from pulling the plug on organ donation.

Two Congressional Committees have fallen prey to bad science and faulty data sourced by special interests. They are threatening the very existence of the world’s leading non-profit organ donation system.

Senate Finance Committee Hearing

SID&T challenged the placing of politics before patients in the recent Senate Finance Committee hearing on organ donation.

“The Senate Finance Committee hearing, the report for which was drafted before the hearing was even held, added nothing to the worthwhile and serious project of NASEM to save more lives, more equitably. Instead, it damaged efforts to ascertain quality in an irresponsible effort to diminish the public’s trust in a system, which while imperfect, is in need of support, not constant, privately orchestrated attack. If there was an interest served by this hearing, it was not the public’s interest, or the interest of even a single patient on the waiting list.”

Did Senator Chuck Grassley mean to call for Iowa’s non-profit Organ Procurement Organization to be immediately shut down when he wrote Secretary Becerra to implement the Rule now? Does Senator Ron Wyden really want chaos throughout the organ donation, procurement, and transplant system as his being a signee to that same letter would indicate? Are they really willing to rely on bad science and faulty data?

We urge them to follow the science and allow some our nation’s most well-trained healthcare professionals save lives.

Monied special Interests driving House Oversight

We also challenge those special interests to acknowledge the bad data they provided to the House Oversight Committee as pointed out by an April 28 letter from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

Key House Leaders Fail to Acknowledge Special Interest Bad Data in Their Own Report

Chairman Krishnamoorthi and Congresswoman Katie Porter have never acknowledged the poor data and misinformation that informed the basis of their Subcommittee’s Report media release that had to be pulled in April of 2022.

The special interest-driven hearings of Senate Finance and House Oversight have opened the door to privateers and data miners who only want to profit from organ donation.

TransMedics: Trading organs for profit?

A Massachusetts based private medical device manufacturer, TransMedics, is the latest for-profit player in the organ donation and transplant sphere to seek increased profits through proposed legislation to privatize parts of the altruistic and human process of organ donation.

Patient rights and donor sensitivity must be protected from special Federal legislation by profiteers.

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.

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