Donated Organs Pass Disease

"It’s a very, very rare event," says Dr. Lewis Teperman, director of transplantation at New York University Medical Center, where two of the four organs ended up.

He co-authored an article about the case in the American Journal of Transplantation to warn other doctors.

"We're alerting people to the fact that if someone calls a death from bacterial meningitis and there is no bacteria, we're saying, you know what, let's back off for a little bit and reconsider whether we're going to use these organs," Teperman says.

Alex's hospital and the donor network responsible for the health of the organs won't do interviews about the case. But in a statement, the donor network urged potential donors not to "allow the horrible circumstances surrounding this rare case to affect their decision to sign the donor registry," which every year gives 22,000 people a second chance at life.

Medical privacy rules may prevent the family from ever knowing the names of the people who died. Now, Alex's parents want to keep others from suffering a similar fate.