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 "organ donors" ...
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The Body Parts of Business
Tribune reporters found tissue donations agencies exploiting people after the death of a loved one and their "increasing reliance on the tissue trade to finance luxurious offices, cars, benefits, and salary packages that stretch well into the six figures." The Tribune also found the U.S. Food and Drug Administration imposed only minimal rules to safeguard the use of tissue and has failed to adopt more stringent regulations.." FDA regulators admitted to the Tribune they were "ill-equipped" and often unable to oversee the increasing international tissue industry. This series prompted an investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a report was issued demanding more information regarding what the tissue is being used for be available so donor families have all the facts. In addition, the American Association of Tissue Banks examined the practice of its members and the info that donor families received. "The association also adopted guidelines for informing donor families whether tissue will be forwarded to for-profit medical or tissue processing companies."
Tags: Food and Drug Administration; organ donation; tissue banking industry
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The Body Brokers
An Orange County Register investigation of organ donations revealed that "American businesses make hundreds of millions of dollars selling products crafted from human bodies, even though it is illegal to profit from cadaver parts." The Register found that private businesses get around the law by establishing financial and other questionable links to nonprofit organ or tissue banks.
Tags: cadavers; organ donors; ethics; profits; money tissue industry cosmetic surgery
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Waiting for Life
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports "how organs are allocated to transplant recipients. It found that where people lived affected the likelihood of receiving an organ and the waiting time for an operation..... One (Medical College of Virginia) lung transplant patient waits; the other patient cuts short her wait by going elsewhere, crossing a little-known boundary that keeps donated organs in Fairfax, (Va.) Now, patients and federal officials are asking if such arbitrary borders leave too many to die..."
Tags: CAR organ donors United Network for Organ Sharing UNOS waiting lists preferential treatment
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Transplanting Life: The Triumphs, The Traps, The Tragedies (Organ Transplants)
The series revealed that hundreds of patients were waiting for lifesaving organ transplants that may never come because their hospitals were turning away large numbers of healthy donor organs for nonmedical reasons, such as a surgeon being unavailable. Many of them died. The story also examined inequities in patient waiting times across the country, telling the stories of patients who had just months to live, but who were at hospitals where the median waiting time was measured in years. Using computer-assisted reporting, the authors analyzed 55,900 transplants and found that the patients who received transplants at centers that do few operations were significantly more likely to die within the first year than patients who received transplants at high-volume centers. The story also found that about half the transplant centers in the country were doing too few transplants to be proficient at the delicate surgery. The series includes the publication of a list of waiting times and mortality rates for more than 600 transplant programs. Center-identified waiting time information is critical to the more than 55,000 patients awaiting a lifesaving transplant, yet it had been impossible for patients to obtain because the private, nonprofit group (UNOS) that keeps the figures wouldn't release them. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Plain Dealer obtained and published these waiting time and organ-refusal figures that had never before been made public.
Tags: None
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No title (id: 12693)
The Chronicle of Philanthropy finds that due to the growing practice of political torture around the globe, organizations are sprouting up to try to rehabilitate the victims of torture. These groups receive funding from the United Nations as well as private donors. (Oct. 5, 1995)
Tags: Murawski Treating the victims of torture Contest entry 9 pgs.
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Warehouses of wealth: The tax-free economy
"Nonprofit businesses are American's fastest growing industry. Yet the government doesn't keep track. There are 1.2 million organizations tax-exempt as a nonprofit, including many surprisingly profitable ones. Like the NFL. ...[ The reporters] determined the magnitude and cost of these tax-exempt businesses, which made $500 billion in 1990 -- nearly six times the incomes of farms of five times that of utilities...Taxpayers make up for what these businesses don't pay -- more than $36 billion a year, by the reporters' calculations. What do taxpayers get in return? Damned little charity." Seven-part series includes: big profits, big salaries, growing commercialism of nonprofit hospitals, universities, museums and other institutions.
Tags: taxes; hospitals; endowments; Blue Cross; Blue Shield; donors; disclosure; nonprofit insurance and pensions; real estate; property; economics; Form 990s; IRS; executive salaries
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Organ Donors
WBUR Radio (Boston) airs a three-part series connecting the national shortage of donor organs to physicians ignoring laws that require them to inform families of suitable donors about donation, Sept. 5 - 7, 1989.
Tags: audio tape; organ donors; health care; Baron required request
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No title (id: 5432)
National Law Journal examines the legal debate over the use of one person's body parts to treat another's illness; finds no laws governing the use of tissues and cells, Dec. 7, 1987.