February 27,2025

Wyden and Sanders Warn Trump Layoffs Threaten Organ Transplant Reform Effort

Mass Layoffs Across the Federal Workforce Primarily Impact New Hires, Including Experts Hired to Modernize the Outdated Organ Transplant System

Letter from Senate Health Leaders Comes as a Report from the New York Times Shows Alarming Disregard for Organ Transplant Waiting List

17 Americans Die Every Day While Waiting for an Organ Transplant

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., sent a letter to the Trump administration expressing alarm that the President’s indiscriminate purge of the federal workforce threatens the progress of the bipartisan effort to modernize the organ transplant system and alleviate the backlog of more than 100,000 Americans on the waiting list. Seventeen Americans die each day waiting for a transplant.

“We share the concern raised in a letter to you by the National Kidney Foundation that indiscriminate lay-offs of probationary employees initiated by HHS on Friday, February 14, 2025 has already resulted in the termination of key personnel hired to implement OPTN modernization initiatives,” Wyden and Sanders wrote. “To allow those efforts to pause or cease altogether would calcify the issues within the organ transplant system which spurred this effort in the first place, and would amount to a failure to implement federal law.”

The letter comes as the Trump administration continues to flout federal laws, causing chaos and dysfunction across the nation. The letter asks Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to share which staff at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) responsible for implementing improvements to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) have been impacted by the mass terminations.

The letter highlights several areas of reform that may be jeopardized or slowed due to the layoffs:

  • Ending the monopoly contract structure that caused the organ donation and transplantation system to become complacent and ineffective.
  • Replacing the archaic technology at the heart of the organ transplant system that has caused organs to be discarded and fatal mistakes due to inaccurate data.
  • Collecting updated and transparent data to ensure proper oversight of Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) and transplant centers.
  • Ensuring conflicts of interest are minimized between the contractors operating the system and the OPTN board, which is responsible for overseeing operations and developing policies and quality standards for OPTN members.

Bipartisan members of Congress have been closely monitoring the implementation of the Securing the U.S. OPTN Act since its enactment in 2023. 

The full letter can be found here.

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