Organ Donor Network Used 'Atrocious' Practices, Former Worker Claims

Organ donors provide a potential lifeline to patients with failing hearts, kidneys and other body parts. But in the back of many potential organ donors' minds is the nagging concern that the harvesting of organs will begin before there's a certainty that they are dead.

Yet that is the explosive charge contained in a lawsuit by a former employee-turned-whistle-blower of the New York Organ Donor Network, who says the organization pressured hospitals to declare patients brain dead to facilitate organ harvesting, the Staten Island Advance reports.