Report: Dead Harvested for Products
01:10 PM ET 04/16/00
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - Donated human remains are processed
into medical products that generate hundreds of millions of dollars
for U.S. companies despite laws barring profit from body parts, The
Orange County Register reported Sunday. Although grieving families are told that the donations are a
gift of life, the newspaper found that material harvested from the
dead fuels an industry that is expected to have $1 billion in
revenues by 2003.
``I thought I was donating to a nonprofit. I didn't know I was
lining someone's pocket,'' said Sandra Shadwick, whose brother's
remains were given to a Los Angeles tissue bank. ``It makes me
angry. It makes me appalled. If it's not illegal, it ought to be.'' The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 banned profits from
the sale of tissue, but companies and nonprofit tissue banks are
allowed to charge reasonable fees to handle and process the parts.
The law does not define a reasonable charge.
``The law has never been tested in court. Nobody has ever
decided what is selling and what isn't,'' said Jeanne
Mowe, executive director of the American Association of Tissue Banks. Nonprofit tissue banks may obtain body parts useful for up to
100 patients from a single cadaver. The parts are then sold to
companies that make products used by doctors and dentists, and the
banks and businesses share revenues.
Survivors urged to donate usually are told about vital organs,
such as hearts or kidneys, but most of the products derived from
the dead are far from lifesaving: Cadaver skin may be used to puff
up the lips of models, enlarge penises or smooth out wrinkles, the
newspaper said.
A single body can provide material that is worth up to $34,000
for nonprofit tissue banks, including skin, tendons, heart valves,
veins and corneas that are then made available to doctors and
hospitals for up to $110,000.
With bone taken from the same body, a cadaver can be worth
$220,000.
``People who donate have no idea tissue is being processed into
products that per gram or per ounce are in the price range of
diamonds,'' said Arthur Caplan, a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.
Lives are enhanced by donations: Tendons help athletes, cadaver
skin helps solve bladder problems and corneas help the blind to
see, said Michael Jeffries, chief financial officer for Osteotech
Inc., a leader in the bone business.
``There is a profit,'' he said. ``It's not an evil thing because
the profit is put to good use.''
The two largest for-profit tissue companies had $142.3 million
in sales last year and each pays its chief executive more than
$460,000 annually, the newspaper said. The four largest nonprofit
tissue banks will make $261 million in sales this year, it said. The number of organ and tissue donors increased 172 percent
nationwide over the past five years, according to the American
Association of Tissue Banks.
Last fall, Vice President Al Gore announced $5 million in grants
to organ and tissue agencies.
``I did not know that the amount of money involved was as large
as you have pointed out,'' Gore told the Register in a recent
telephone interview.
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