OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
9:54 AM – Friday, November 21, 2025
The United States House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee is seeking answers after nearly a dozen whistleblowers came forward alleging that an organization in New Jersey responsible for organ transplants has engaged in illegal practices.
On Wednesday, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and oversight subcommittee Chair David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) sent a letter to the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network (NJTO) detailing the numerous allegations made against the organization.
Whistleblowers claim the NJTO committed fraud by unlawfully billing Medicare, covering up illegal activity, and failing to obtain patient consent before harvesting organs, among other shocking accusations.
The committee cited an incident at Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, N.J., where a patient “reanimated” after being pronounced dead to begin harvesting organs.
The committee believes NJTO President and CEO Carolyn Welsh, along with other executives, authorized staff to proceed with organ harvesting when asked not to, before hospital staff intervened, blocking the organs from recovery.
“Several whistleblowers have alleged that documentation regarding this case has been deleted or otherwise manipulated. The Committee is also aware that on or around July 13, 2025, NJTO email servers were taken down before the emails related to this [donation after circulatory death] case were deleted,” the committee’s letter stated.
The letter wrote to Welsh, “The Committee further understands that you—someone with no clinical training—decided to proceed from outside of the hospital, even while the hospital staff on site shared concerns about your decision.”
The committee wrote that it was informed of “several cases where, even though patients had removed the donor designation from their licenses, NJTO allegedly did not consider that to be a change of the original authorization to be an organ donor.” Whistleblowers said that the organization pressured families to consent to organ donation on behalf of loved ones, sometimes insisting they did not need consent, even if the patients were not currently listed as organ donors on their driver’s licenses.
“If true, not only is this aggressive behavior a potential violation of state law, it also breaks trust in the organ transplant system, which is vital to maintaining crucial life-saving services,” their letter stated.
“Families place extraordinary trust in this system at the most painful moments of their lives, and what we have uncovered puts the integrity of America’s organ procurement system at stake,” Smith said. “Every organization entrusted with this life-saving work must meet the highest standards, and any refusal to do so is unacceptable.”
The committee also accused Welsh of facilitating a “culture of fear and retaliation” within the NJTO.
“The Committee is aware that NJTO is in possession of information that it has not produced. Documents provided by NJTO indicate that it discarded only 79 pancreata from 2021 through September of 2024,” the panel said. “However, as previously stated, the Committee has documentation of NJTO’s mass discard of 100 pancreata on March 18, 2024, which is clearly not reflected in NJTO’s production.”
“The Committee received damning evidence that NJTO potentially LIED to Congress regarding their pancreata research program in response to our inquiries,” said Smith on X. “The Committee received reports that NJTO was mass discarding pancreata, and in their response to our requests, the organization claimed that wasn’t happening. Internal records the Committee has obtained say otherwise.”
The committee previously looked into the troubling accusations against NTJO, having sent a letter in July. In response, Welsh sent an email out to her staff.
“We are fully cooperating with this inquiry and are confident in our practices, our leadership, and the integrity of our mission,” the email read.
In bold text, the CEO warned employees to contact an authority within the organization if they received inquiries from the news media or from hospital partners. She told staff to “follow our process of not letting non-employees in” if anyone were to visit their headquarters.
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