Last spring at a small Alabama hospital, a team of transplant surgeons prepared to cut into Misty Hawkins. The clock was ticking. Her organs wouldn’t be usable for much longer.
Days earlier, she had been a vibrant 42-year-old with a playful sense of humor and a love for the Thunder Beach Motorcycle Rally. But after Ms. Hawkins choked while eating and fell into a coma, her mother decided to take her off life support and donate her organs. She was removed from a ventilator and, after 103 minutes, declared dead.
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A surgeon made an incision in her chest and sawed through her breastbone.
That’s when the doctors discovered her heart was beating. She appeared to be breathing. They were slicing into Ms. Hawkins while she was alive.
Across the United States, an intricate system of hospitals, doctors and nonprofit donation coordinators carries out tens of thousands of lifesaving transplants each year. At every step, it relies on carefully calibrated protocols to protect both donors and recipients.
But in recent years, as the system has pushed to increase transplants, a growing number of patients have endured premature or bungled attempts to retrieve their organs. Though Ms. Hawkins’s case is an extreme example of what can go wrong, a New York Times examination revealed a pattern of rushed decision-making that has prioritized the need for more organs over the safety of potential donors.