The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Transplants" ...
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Crime and Human Organs
Bloomberg Markets magazine shows how impoverished people from Belarus to Nicaragua have been humiliated, maimed, and killed by organ traffickers and the doctors with whom they work. The stories expose the activities of transplant rings that supply wealthy Americans, Europeans, and Israelis with kidneys extracted from the poor.
Tags: Belarus; Nicaragua; Kidney; Organ Donation; Black Market
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Failure to Inform
“Doctors at dialysis clinics have failed to inform thousands of patients about kidney transplantation, an oversight that could shorten their lives and cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year”. Many patients start dialysis without hearing the benefits of a kidney transplant. The benefits being about 10 years put on your life and saving the federal Medicare program “thousands of dollars a patient”. This series uncovered money plays a large role when prescribing patients on dialysis rather than getting a transplant.
Tags: medicine; health care; medical; costs; kidney disease; taxpayers; debilitating; insurance; treatments
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Transplanting Too Soon
The series found that each year hundreds of patients have liver transplants when they don't need them and might never will. One in 10 patients dies when they could have lived longer without the surgery.
Tags: liver; transplant; surgery; wait list; hospital; donor
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"Prescription for Profits"
The Wall Street Journal examined whether nonprofit hospitals, which account for the majority of hospitals in the U.S., deserve the billions of dollars in annual tax exemptions they receive. The Journal's series revealed that, far from struggling financially, many nonprofit hospitals have become profit machines while shirking their charitable missions. Among the series' findings: Some pay tens of thousands of dollars upfront' others have closed facilities in poor inner cities and built new ones in affluent suburbs; and one hospital put patients' lives at risk to increase its lucrative liver-transplant business.
Tags: charitable causes; medical service; patient care; hospital taxes; nonprofit hospitals; Amish; Mennonites
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Transplant Patients at Risk
Hundreds of people's lives were put in danger because of how Kaiser Permanente mishandled paper work after opening a kidney transplant center in San Francisco in 2004.
Tags: surgery; fraud; medicaid; medicare; organ sharing
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Taking the Cuffs off at Carswell
Fort Worth Weekly reporter Betty Brink has been covering medical and sexual abuse of female inmates at Carswell Federal Medical Center, in Texas, since 1999. As a result of her coverage, and his own investigation, a retired judge, Ross Sears is asking for a Congressional investihgation into the deadly conditions at "the only prison hospital in the country for mentally or chronicallly ill or dying women who have been convicted of a federal crime."
Tags: medical negligence; sexual abuse; Carswell Federal Mediacal Center; medical records; Bureau of Prisons; FOI requests; U.S. Office of Special Counsel; Dr. Roger Guthrie; Ross Sears; retaliation; compassionate release; John Peter Smith Hospital; Tarrant County Medical Examiner; autopsies; prison deaths; women inmates; femaile prisoners; Baylor Regional Transplant Institute; Huguley Memorial Medical Center; brain damage; whistleblower complaints; medical malpractice; sentinel event; rape;
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Transplant Trauma: A crisis uncovered at Kaiser
"The kidney transplant program at the nation's largest non-profit HMO, Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente, was supposed to a model organ transplant program for thousands of desperately ill patients. But it April 2006, KPIX-TV discovered that program was in complete disarray and those problems were endangering the lives of the more than 2,000 Kaiser patients in need of transplants."
Tags: organ transplant; HMO; Kaiser Permanentel; kidney
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Patients in Danger: The Caremark Investigation
Caremark, one of the biggest health-care organizations in the nation, was failing to provide necessary health care to customers. KHOU's investigation found that this included Caremark limiting dosages and refill amounts for necessary drugs like insulin for diabetics or anti-rejection drugs for transplant patients, often going against the physician's written prescription. Caremark employees in multiple states had a mandate to change these prescriptions as the company attempted to save money. In addition, "used" medications which had been returned to Caremark were simply relabeled and sent out again without testing. This practice is illegal, because for instance a drug like insulin loses half its effectiveness if not properly refrigerated. Also, Caremark employees informed KHOU of cover-ups that occurred during government inspections.
Tags: Drugs; Caremark; insulin; health care; prescription
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Stealing From the Dead
This story tells the exclusive inside story of an Indianapolis business man who purchased a funeral home in New York where funeral home workers are accused of raiding the cadavers entrusted to their care. It exposed delays by the King County Prosecutor's office in its investigation of the case. The federal government also failed. FDA records reveal years of violations cited against the tissue processor in this case, but the FDA leveled no clear sanctions until it finally launched the nation's largest human tissue recall.The oversight lapses allowed 1900 pieces of potentially unscreened tissue into hospital operating rooms across the country. The story uncovers the first Indiana patient to test postitive for a potentially life threatening disease after receiving an implant from the recalled batch.
Tags: tissue harvesting; funeral homes; cadavers; implants; FDA; transplants
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Lives on the Line: Organ donors face unforeseen dangers
Despite the increasing number of organ transplants each year in the United States, there is little regulation by the government. In addition, no national registry exists to track donors after their procedures. This investigation focuses on how this lack of regulation and tracking not only affects who can donate, but also the lives of those who try to help others. This series also chronicles the complications surrounding live organ donations, including permanent physical damage and even death.
Tags: live organ donors; donor data; "kidney cult; " Internet; transplants