The federal government is moving to shut down the organization that manages organ donations in the Kentucky region, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday, calling the organization a “bad apple.”
“When an organization entrusted with the gift of life repeatedly puts patients at risk, the federal government has the duty to act, and that’s why we’re acting today,” Kennedy said at a news conference in Lexington.
Louisville-based Network for Hope has been under federal scrutiny for more than a year, since a whistleblower who worked with an earlier version of the nonprofit told Congress about a case in which staff started to harvest a man’s organs before he was actually dead.
CNN was the first national news organization to speak with the man, TJ Hoover, who survived that experience.
In 2021, Hoover overdosed and was taken to the hospital in cardiac arrest. After being unresponsive for several days, he woke up on the operating table as his chest was being shaved and his body bathed in surgical solution, and he heard staff discussing how they would take his organs, Hoover told his sister. A doctor finally called off the surgery, and Hoover was not operated on.
