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Mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say

At a hospital in Kentucky, a man who had been declared dead after a drug overdose was moving and visibly crying as he was prepped for surgery to donate his vital organs. The surgery was stopped, and the man is alive three years later.

toggle caption Hoover Rhorer Family Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room. Donna Rhorer of Richmond, Kentucky, told NPR that her 36-year-old brother, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, was the patient involved in the case. “I hope that a case like this really is extreme, but it does reveal some of those underlying issues that can arise when there are disagreements about the determination of death,” says Dr. Matthew DeCamp, an associate professor of Medicine and bioethicist at the University of Colorado.

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