Published 17 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1713
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1713

News

Pathology departments are still holding human tissue, report says

Michael Day

1 Milan

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Seven years on from the public inquiry into the retention of organs at Alder Hey, pathology departments are still routinely holding on to human tissue because they are unsure of what to do with it, a report by the Human Tissue Authority said this week.

In the first comprehensive review of the 2004 Human Tissue Act—introduced in response to concerns about inappropriate retention of organs after postmortem examinations—the authority’s report said that disposal of human tissue remains a major problem.

The review was based on site visits to 49 mortuaries in NHS hospitals and local authorities—targeted because initial administrative checks indicated that they might be high risk sites—carried out between 1 April 2007 and 31 March 2008. The authority also visited a random sample of low risk sites as a control check.

It found that nearly a third of pathology departments visited "continue to retain material because they simply have . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

The Human Tissue Act
Peter N Furness
BMJ 2006 333: 512. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ