Host: Dr. Joe Varon Guest: Jan Jekielek
Trust in public health is already fragile and now, a bombshell new HHS report has raised questions few thought possible. Could hospitals really have begun organ procurement before patients were truly dead?
This week, Dr. Joseph Varon, IMA Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, joins Jan Jekielek, senior editor and investigative journalist at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders, for an eye-opening and deeply human discussion on the ethics of modern medicine and the sanctity of life itself.
From shifting definitions of “brain death” to the growing controversy around “donation after circulatory death,” this conversation asks what happens when compassion collides with profit and how truth can help restore trust.
Most of us don’t think twice about checking the organ donor box. It’s a generous act—when you’re gone, why not give someone else a chance at life? For decades, organ donation has been presented as one of medicine’s most straightforward ethical goods: a gift that costs the dead nothing but means everything to the living.
But that simple narrative rests on a critical assumption: that everyone agrees on when “dead” actually means dead. And that the people making that determination have no other interests pulling at them.
In practice, it’s more complicated. Brain death criteria vary between hospitals. Transplant teams operate under intense pressure to secure viable organs quickly. And in some cases, as recent reports have shown, the line between “doing everything to save this patient” and “preparing to harvest their organs” has become disturbingly blurred.
Many of us have heard stories about forced organ harvesting in China—prisoners killed on demand for their organs. It sounds like something that could only happen under an authoritarian regime. For 20 years, Jan Jekielek has investigated these crimes, compiling evidence that many initially dismissed as too extreme to believe.
But tonight’s conversation reveals something more unsettling: after decades of collaboration between American and Chinese transplant systems, the ethical compromises aren’t staying overseas. Together, Dr. Joseph Varon and Jekielek examine how the pressure to harvest organs has intensified in America—and what can be done to restore ethical boundaries.
Meet the Experts
Dr. Joseph Varon, MD, FACP, FCCP, FCCM, FRSM
President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance. With nearly four decades of experience in critical care medicine, Dr. Varon has witnessed firsthand the ethical pressures facing transplant medicine. During his fellowship training, he repeatedly encountered patients declared brain dead who were clearly still alive. He advocates for the principle that “medicine must serve life, not redefine death.” Find more of Dr. Varon’s thoughts on the questions around organ donation below:
Jan Jekielek
Senior Editor and Investigative Journalist at The Epoch Times and host of American Thought Leaders. For 20 years, Jekielek has investigated forced organ harvesting in China. His reporting helped establish the evidentiary foundation for U.S. legislation aimed at combating this practice. He is the author of the forthcoming book Killed to Order, which examines the global organ trafficking industry and its connections to Western medicine.
The Pressure Problem in American Hospitals
Dr. Varon began by describing a problem most Americans don’t know exists: hospitals are calling transplant teams before patients are actually dead.
“One of the ways by which you get evaluated by CMS and some of these other federal companies is by whether or not you follow the guidelines,” Dr. Varon explained. “And one of the guidelines is that for every person that dies in the hospital, you have to call the transplant team. Everybody. No matter whether you are a donor or not a donor.”
The issue is that many hospitals interpret this as permission to call early—sometimes while patients are still alive. “The person is not dead yet. The person has not been declared yet, but you already have somebody that comes in,” Dr. Varon said. “And I hate to do the analogy, but these people are salivating.”
When Patients Aren’t Actually Dead
During his fellowship training, Dr. Varon flew to potential donor sites to evaluate organs. His job included performing bronchoscopies to check lung viability. In a truly brain-dead patient, there’s no response to the procedure.
“There were more than one instance where I would go in, I put in my little scope, and the patient starts either moving or coughing,” Dr. Varon recalled. “And you look at the nursing staff and you said, ‘Hey, this person is not dead. What are you talking about?'”
The response was always the same: a neurologist had declared brain death based on test results. But Dr. Varon emphasized that true brain death requires “total cessation of blood flow to the brain” confirmed by multiple tests and two clinicians. “We’ve seen people with flat EEGs that come back to life,” he noted.
Nurses developed their own terminology for what they witnessed. “Many of the nurses would come and tell us, ‘Hey, the vultures are coming in,'” Dr. Varon said.
In 2024, HHS decertified two American transplant centers for violating the Dead Donor Rule—the fundamental principle that organs should only be removed after death is irreversible. The problem, Dr. Varon explained, is that “brain death criteria vary between institutions” and “different U.S. states apply different statutes for defining death.”
The lack of awareness in the public is what prompted Dr. Varon to raise the issue. And he’s created a dedicated and comprehensive guide that expands on the issue further, free to download and share (just like this webinar).
China’s Organ Harvesting System
Jekielek has spent two decades documenting what he calls “one of humanity’s greatest evils yet to be seen on this planet”—forced organ harvesting in China.
The evidence started accumulating in 2005 when Israeli transplant surgeon Jakob Levi had a patient schedule a heart transplant in China in two weeks. “Jakob said, ‘That’s impossible. How could you schedule a heart transplant?'” Jekielek recounted. But the patient went, got his heart, and returned.
“There’s only one way that you could know when that heart transplant is going to happen, schedule it ahead of time, and that is you’re going to know when someone’s going to be dead, and the only way you can know that they’re going to be dead is if you make them dead yourself.”
The Falun Gong Persecution
The primary victims were Falun Gong practitioners, a spiritual movement banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999. When the regime cracked down, millions went into prisons and labor camps.
“The moment these millions of Falun Gong go into the system, basically the whole transplant industry in China skyrockets because it experiences exponential growth.”
Survivors who escaped reported receiving expensive medical tests—blood work, tissue typing, organ evaluations—alongside torture. Recorded phone calls to Chinese hospitals revealed doctors saying, “I can get you organs in weeks or even days. Yes, I can even get you Falun Gong organs.”
A 2022 study in the American Journal of Transplantation found at least 71 documented cases in Chinese medical literature where the Dead Donor Rule was violated. “The method of death was organ extraction itself,” Jekielek said.
The first survivor came forward: Cheng Pei Ming, who escaped to Thailand with a 14-inch scar where surgeons took part of his liver and lung without consent. Medical scans confirmed it happened. The Chinese regime admitted they did it.
How Ethics Migrate Across Borders
After 20 years of collaboration between American and Chinese transplant systems—training programs, equipment sales, shared research—the ethical contamination has spread.
Jekielek pointed to Wesley Smith’s book Culture of Death, which describes the shift from Hippocratic medicine (focused on the individual patient) to utilitarian bioethics (focused on the greater good).
“Hippocratic medicine is: you have your patient and your number one priority is to do no harm to that patient,” Jekielek explained. “Utilitarian bioethics is thinking for the greater good. The problem is at the edges, it becomes very easy to sacrifice the edges—the unusual cases.”
Canada’s Grim Preview
Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) as a billable medical procedure. It’s now the fifth leading cause of death. At least one documented case exists where someone died via assisted suicide and their heart was immediately restarted and transplanted.
“You can imagine situations where people who are feeling hopeless, people who feel like they’re not important to society—maybe if they give their organs, wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Jekielek said.
Dr. Varon’s concern was direct: “We may be getting into that situation if we’re not smart in this country.”
👉 Learn more: Health Freedom on the Line: IMA at the 2025 Reclaiming Conference in Canada
Restoring Trust: What Comes Next
Both experts pointed to concrete steps already underway. The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation has refused to accept research involving organs from Chinese prisoners. “This is very powerful,” Jekielek said. “International, very reputable organizations taking a stand.”
Three federal bills are in progress: the Falun Gong Protection Act, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, and legislation prohibiting Medicare/insurance coverage for transplants involving harvested organs. Six states have already passed laws against transplant tourism to China.
IMA has released a comprehensive guide: Understanding Organ Donation, Transplants, and Brain Death. “I’m a big proponent of organ transplantation because I do see that they make a big difference,” Dr. Varon said. “But I am against some of the things that were mentioned today.”
When asked what gives him hope after 20 years documenting these abuses, Jekielek pointed to organizations like IMA.
“There’s a foundational transformation happening—going back to Hippocratic medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, thinking about what can I do for this individual patient.”
Dr. Varon noted that medical schools have largely abandoned ethics training, but new models are emerging. “There’s people like yourself and many of the other doctors that are part of IMA who have become pillars of medical ethics,” Jekielek said. “I hope that they take a stand on this issue.”
Dr. Varon’s closing principle was clear: “Medicine must serve life, not redefine death.”
More on: American Thought Leaders | Dr. Joseph Varon | Honest Medicine | Jan Jekielek | The Epoch Times
