In case you’re wondering which ripped-from-the-headlines story will result in competing dramatic television programs on Netflix, FX, and Peacock in 2026, here it is: A Houston hospital has announced their discovery that one of their own doctors tampered with the liver transplant waiting list to knock his own patients off, on purpose!
What? The? Fuuuuuuuck.
“Inappropriate changes … effectively inactivated the candidates on the liver transplant waiting list,” Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center said in a statement, according to the Houston Chronicle. “Subsequently, these patients did not/were not able to receive organ donation offers while inactive.”
The medical center said in the statement that the doctor admitted to changing patient records.
What in the — how? Who? Huh?
The hospital hasn’t released the name of the physician in question, but the New York Times named a suspect. WE DID NOT DO IT THEY DID IT.
For decades, Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr., a transplant surgeon in Texas, gained accolades and national prominence for his work, including by helping to enforce professional standards in the country’s sprawling organ transplant system.
But officials are now investigating allegations that Dr. Bynon was secretly manipulating a government database to make some of his own patients ineligible to receive new livers, potentially depriving them of lifesaving care.
So whoever done did it, you’re probably wondering about a motive. The answer appears to be nobody knows except maybe the investigators who are investigating and maybe possibly the person who did the thing.
Naturally, friends and I developed some theories.
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Manipulating the database would in some way improve outcomes for the surgeon, making him look better and possibly garnering more funding for the hospital or, perhaps, a raise in dinero for the doctor. For example, if he felt certain patients would never actually survive for the long term after a transplant procedure, maybe he eliminated them from the database so that the folks who did receive transplants under his care appeared to be more likely to thrive.
GOD COMPLEX: The perp decided he should be the one to determine who lived or died based on his moral assessment of their character. This put me in mind of Charles Cullen, the so-called Angel of Death nurse who roamed the hallways of many hospitals in New Jersey — including the one where much of my family has been treated for the past several decades — and killed tons of patients before being identified.
JUST RANDOMLY TERRIBLE BEHAVIOR WITH NO MOTIVE EXCEPT POWER: This is a little different from the previous theory. Maybe the person just did it because they could do it.
Anyway, it’s all fucking terrible, and thankfully apparently incredibly rare. It raises a few more questions: How was the person able to do this? Why were there not enough checks and balances to prevent this type of tampering? And who ultimately made the complaint to warrant the investigation? Did they know who was doing it? Were they in on it? And what can be done further to ensure the safety of patients in this particular program, as well as in other transplant programs?
I’m not usually one to focus on a tale like this, but it caught my eye for a few reasons. The main one is I know people who’ve survived thanks to a liver transplant, and have a friend on the waiting list for one. As a sober alcoholic, I certainly have heard from many folks whose entire lives (and, shit, their whole families) were saved and changed by a liver transplant.
I have no doubt this has sent a lot of already-frightened patients into increased anxiety, but I’m thankful to know that this kind of malfeasance is apparently very hard to do.
Which brings me again to my guiding question — SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?
I’m no doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but this behavior seems counter to that “do no harm” oath those folks are supposed to take seriously.
I have also been thinking about the fact that when something like this happens, almost inevitably we find that more than one person had suspicions or knew, but didn’t do anything because they didn’t want to risk their own ass. Very rare that somebody is such an absolute genius that their behavior goes totally undetected before they finally get caught.