By Joseph Walker

A former organ procurement worker who told Congress she was pressured to take organs from a person who was still alive was fired after her allegation was relayed during a recent hearing.

Nyckoletta Martin, who had previously worked for an organ collection group called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, said Tuesday that she had been fired by her most recent employer, which makes devices that help preserve hearts, lungs and livers during transport.

Martin was fired two days after a letter, which she wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee alleging the pressure on organ collectors, was discussed during a Sept. 11 hearing.

The Kentucky organ procurement organization said it notified Martin’s employer Paragonix Technologies that it had received a complaint from a team member about Martin’s conduct during an organ recovery case and asked that she no longer be assigned any of the organization’s cases.

“We did not comment on or address the status of her employment with Paragonix, and the request stemmed solely from this recent complaint,” Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates said.

Paragonix, of Waltham, Mass., said it doesn’t comment on “matters concerning current or former contractors.”

A spokesman for the Energy and Commerce Committee said it “is aware of the whistleblower’s termination and is actively investigating it in a bipartisan manner.”

Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, known as KODA, is one of 56 federally chartered nonprofits that pick up organs for transplant.

More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are on the waiting list for organs, mostly kidneys. Some 17 Americans die each day because the troubled transplant system doesn’t meet the demand, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Biden administration has launched efforts to overhaul the organ-procurement system. The subcommittee has been investigating allegations of impropriety by organizations that are part of the transplant system.

In a letter to the House oversight subcommittee, Martin said that while she was working at Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates in 2021, she, a surgeon and other workers refused to procure organs from a man who was “crying” and “shaking his head ‘No.’”

The patient subsequently left the hospital alive.

Martin later quit the Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates job and found work at Paragonix. A mother of five, she said her role at Paragonix was to help surgeons prepare organs for transit after they were taken out of deceased donors.

The patient’s sister, Donna Rhorer, said her brother has improved since leaving the hospital but has brain damage and is undergoing speech and occupational therapy.