In an open letter, more than 1,100 organ donation and transplant professionals, physicians, patients, and donor families decry harmful narratives propagated during Congressional hearing and in media; say misinformation causing drop in Americans registering as donors MCLEAN, Va. , Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) today announced that more than 1,100 professionals in organ donation and transplant, along with physicians, patients, and donor families, have signed an open letter denouncing an ongoing campaign of misinformation that is eroding public trust in organ donation and threatening the lives of patients awaiting transplants.
The open letter warns that national data from Donate Life America (DLA) already demonstrates a decline in the number of Americans registering as organ donors, a trend seen in 80 percent of states consistently reporting state donor registry data to DLA over the past three years. "For over five years, our nation's organ procurement organizations (OPOs) - the non-profit, community-based organizations that work with grieving families every day to save lives through transplantation - have been subject to malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donation and transplant in the U.S.
is untrustworthy and broken," the letter reads. "Ignored is the fact that there has been 13 years of consistent growth in organ donation by OPOs, leading to a record 43,000.