Friendly reminder: We launched a national collaborative reporting project to better understand the 2020 census. What do you want to know about how the census will affect your community? Ask our network here.

Lost in transplantation

Imagine you’ve been granted a coveted spot on a waitlist for a new organ, such as a kidney. You spend months waiting anxiously, then the call comes: Your turn. 

Drop what you’re doing. Get to the hospital. Get prepped for surgery. Get put under.

Except when you wake up from anesthesia, your situation hasn’t changed. There’s no new kidney. Your new lease on life, you’re told, was lost in transit.

On this week’s episode, we teamed up with Kaiser Health News for a close look at the complex world of organ transportation: what can go wrong, and what could be working better.

Because organ transportation is not a centralized system, no government agency keeps a definitive, comprehensive set of records. But one national coordination center, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), has data that offer an unprecedented glimpse of the system and its shortcomings.

Out of just over 8,800 UNOS shipments of organs and tissue over roughly four years, more than 7% had transportation problems. Nearly 170 organs never got transplanted, and almost 370 were delayed between two and 12 hours.  

In a system where any logistical failure is widely considered unacceptable, this rate of failure shocked doctors that Kaiser Health News reporters interviewed.

“Some of these organs wind up getting trashed,” said Dr. Christie Gooden, a transplant surgeon in Dallas. “That’s just ridiculously frustrating. We have way too many people on the list, way too many people waiting to lose an organ just because of logistics.”

Read more:  Lifesaving Organs Go Missing in Transit

Also in the episode …

“Honor walks” are a new ritual being adopted by hospitals across the U.S. to pay tribute to organ donors. After a person has died and before their organs are recovered, hospital staff, friends and acquaintances line the hallways to pay tribute. Amid what for many families is a disastrous, unexpected loss, it’s a simple but powerful ritual. Watch one here.

Introducing: The Witnesses

Our brand-new documentary series, “The Witnesses,” aired Saturday and Sunday on Oxygen. It’s based on a five-year investigation by reporter Trey Bundy into the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders, who have gone to extreme lengths to keep the details from public view.

Watch episode 1 on Oxygen.

Read More: 

• Pennsylvania Opens Grand Jury Investigation into Jehovah's Witnesses' Cover-up of Sex Abuse
• Read Trey’s years of reporting, which now culminate in “The Witnesses.”

Many victims of assault within close-knit religious communities are discouraged by family members and religious leaders from reporting the abuse. In this environment of secrecy, the media has played an important role by amplifying the voices of those who choose to speak out. 

Your support ensures that we’ll continue to be here to expose the systematic silencing that allows abusive behavior to go unchecked. Help us amplify the voices that need to be heard.

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.