By Reuters Fact Check U.S. federal health officials announced a new rule in November that allows kidney and liver transplants between HIV-positive donors and recipients in clinical practice, contrary to social media posts falsely suggesting that the rule may facilitate organ transplants from donors with HIV to recipients without the virus.

Based on nearly a decade of research showing that kidney and liver transplants between two people with HIV can be performed safely and effectively, the new rule cuts the requirement that transplants between these patients only be done as part of a clinical study.

One of the social media posts shares a meme that includes parts of an X post from The Hill newspaper that reads: “HIV-positive organ transplants allowed under new rule,” alongside images of two characters from the 1990s television sitcom “Seinfeld.”

Text on the images implies a recipient without HIV could receive blood from a person with the virus. At the bottom left corner of the meme, text superimposed on Jerry Seinfeld’s photo says: “What happened?” and text on an image of the character known as Kramer at the bottom right says: “You got 3 pints of HIV in you.”

But only people with HIV are eligible recipients of kidney and liver transplants involving donors with HIV under the November policy update.

The meme shared on social media cropped out a link included in The Hill’s X post which leads to the outlet’s article explaining that the new rule only applies to HIV-positive donors and recipients.

The misleading narrative surfaced online after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services $(HHS)$ announced on Nov. 26 that HIV-positive patients who need a liver or kidney transplant can now receive an organ from donors with HIV without participating in clinical research.

The new rule expands on the Obama-era HIV Organ Policy Equity $(HOPE)$ Act signed into law in 2013 and implemented in 2015, which approved organ transplants between people with HIV but only in research settings. That allowed officials to evaluate the post-transplant survival and rejection rates, organ function and potential risks, such as that a recipient could be affected by a different HIV strain from the donor.

The HOPE Act lifted a 1988 ban on acquiring organs from HIV-positive donors.

In 2015, the HHS and National Institutes of Health (NIH) published research criteria for HIV-positive organ transplants, which have been performed since 2016, first involving deceased-donor organs and, since 2019, with living donors.

More than 517 kidney and liver transplants have been performed between donors and recipients with HIV since the HOPE Act came into effect, providing a “large body of evidence” indicating these transplants are safe, the HHS said.

For instance, a study published in October, led by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that the safety and efficacy of kidney transplants between people with HIV are comparable to transplants from donors without HIV to HIV-positive recipients. The study also reported similar high survival rates and low organ rejection rates between the two groups.

Federal health officials are currently seeking public comments on proposed changes to the 2015 research criteria, including suggestions that could help accelerate research on transplants of organs other than kidneys and livers, such as heart and lung transplants.

Spokespersons for the HHS and The Hill did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

VERDICT

Missing context. The November 2024 policy update allows kidney and liver transplants between people with HIV, not from HIV-positive donors to people without the virus.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.