(LifeSiteNews) — A Texas family is seeking answers after their infant daughter’s body was transferred to a funeral home without her organs following the baby’s sudden death at a Fort Worth hospital.
Samaria Bates and her fiancé, Kenneth Sauls, welcomed premature twin girls on October 23, 2025, when they were born at 29 weeks at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital. Thankfully, the infants had no major health problems, but they were kept in the neonatal intensive care unit to grow older and stronger before being discharged home.
For six weeks the babies did well. However, when their father arrived on December 5 for a routine visit he was blocked from entering because a “sterile procedure” was taking place. The family had not been notified of any medical emergency. Sadly, little Samaria died later that same day. But it gets worse. Even though Samaria’s parents say they did not consent to organ removal, when their baby arrived at the funeral home her organs were missing.
This horrific experience is unfortunately not unique. Just this month, during a U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing “Lives at Stake: Holding Tax-Exempt Organ Procurement Organizations Accountable,” Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama stated on record that organs have been going missing from deceased Alabama prisoners. In 2023, deceased inmate Brandon Clay Dotson was brought to the funeral home missing a heart. The body of another prisoner, Charles Edward Singleton, was delivered to the funeral home without any of his internal organs.
Shockingly, these were not isolated incidents: five years previously, Alabama medical students noticed that a disproportionate number of their lab specimens were coming from prisoners and filed an ethics complaint. A lawsuit brought by prisoners’ families revealed that standardized consent forms were allowing the Alabama prison system to divert organs from the autopsies of deceased prisoners toward the medical school. Based on this example, it seems likely that baby Samaria’s parents may have fallen prey to a standard “consent for treatment” form at their hospital, many of which do include a consent for organ or tissue removal and disposal.
READ: Organ donation industry’s redefinitions of death threaten living people
The abovementioned House Ways and Means Subcommittee investigation also exposed how Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) are committing apparent Medicare fraud by misappropriating human organs. Representative Aaron Bean of Florida displayed a photograph showing boxes of human organs sitting on shelves and wondered why they were not being used for transplants. Jennifer Erickson, a Senior Fellow of the Federation of American Scientists, explained that OPOs are exploiting a legal loophole in which they receive payment for organs that will never be transplanted.
While people donate organs in the belief that they are helping someone in need, the loophole allows OPOs to receive payment for organs that are not destined for transplantation but rather for “research.” Ms. Erickson said that in the case of pancreases, this loophole has led to a dramatic rise in pancreas harvesting. Over 7,000 pancreases have been harvested in the U.S. since 2020 with no corresponding increase in pancreas transplants, and no proof at all that these extra organs were actually being used for research. In fact, a New Jersey OPO threw out a hundred pancreases on a single day after federal agencies started investigating this practice. When Rep. Bean asked what this means for patients, Ms. Erickson said, “It means that a hundred families in New Jersey, on the worst day of their life because they lost a loved one, a wife or a child to a car accident or some other injury, said yes to organ donation. They were lied to and their loved ones’ organs were cut out and left on shelves to exploit a CMS loophole.”
Ms. Erickson also told the Ways and Means subcommittee that OPOs are harvesting kidneys that will never be used for transplantation. She related how an industry insider gave a presentation to other OPOs regarding how to differentiate the financial count on kidneys from the clinical count, essentially showing them how to commit Medicare fraud. She gave testimony from another congressional whistleblower who said that when their OPOs freezers were too full of kidneys, they would take the excess to a nearby hospital and incinerate them.
Rep. Bean found this shocking, especially because the largest single payer of OPOs is Medicare, meaning that taxpayers are funding this waste and abuse. “Our report shows that our inspector general found examples of OPOs misusing Medicaid dollars on everything from sporting events, limousines, retreats, five-star retreats, breaking the law on their nonprofit status … this needs to be on the front page of every newspaper and on every newscast that there is waste, fraud, and abuse. And it’s shocking and it’s evil.”
Given the abuse of public trust by those involved in organ procurement, it’s time to take action. When entering a hospital, clinic, or even a prison, read any consent forms carefully and modify them if there are concerning statements before affixing your signature. Detailed instructions for medical caregivers are available online. A life-affirming medical power of attorney document should be filed with your healthcare provider and hospital.
Because multiple federal agencies (such as the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and two U.S. House Committees) are currently investigating the organ procurement industry, withdrawing your consent to be a registered organ donor seems prudent at this time. You can easily do this by changing the donor designation on your driver’s license, and by removing your name from the U.S. National Donor Registry. For added protection, you should register your choice not to donate in your electronic medical record and carry a “I Refuse to be an Organ Donor” wallet card.
Heidi Klessig MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ donation and transplantation. She is the author of “The Brain Death Fallacy” and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.