Family attitudes to research using samples taken at coroner's postmortem examinations: review of records

Introduction

The response of families asked for cadaveric blood and tissue may have been affected by adverse publicity about hospitals retaining tissues and organs removed at post mortem without consent. The tissue bank at Peterborough was asked to contribute control samples to an English Department of Health funded study to validate tests for viral markers in postmortem material. The study required samples of cadaveric blood (10–20 ml), lymph node (one intrathoracic), and liver (2 cm³).1 Peterborough was selected because it does not have a high prevalence of bloodborne viral infections and because the tissue bank had the infrastructure to retrieve postmortem tissue for research.2 Participation in this study enabled us to evaluate the attitudes of families who were asked to allow the pathologist to take samples for research during a postmortem examination being done at the request of the coroner.