Policy

Unclaimed and unidentified organs

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The Academy of Medical Sciences responded to the Retained Organs Commission Consultation on unclaimes and unidentified organs. The main points included:

• The potential future contribution of individual tissue samples to teaching and research is impossible to predict.
• Archival material should be reviewed and its retention should be encouraged because there is always a possibility that it may be useful in ethically regulated work towards improving human health by research and education.
• We believe that microscope slides and tissue blocks, as well as banks of frozen biopsies, used for examinations where fixation is a technical disadvantage, should be retained as part of the medical record.
• If regulations applied to whole major organs are applied to all human biological material the result would be farcical, and would damage patient care.
• With reference to the establishment of a Human Tissue Authority, we see no reason why these existing NHS Research Ethics Committees should not be given responsibility for the oversight of local collections of post-mortem tissue.
• The NHS should encourage all patients to record explicitly their wishes in relation to a variety of matters, including involvement in teaching, the use of tissues removes at operations, organ donation and poet-mortem procedures.

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Professor Ian Lauder, FMedSci (chair)
Dean
Leicester Warwick Medical School

Professor Peter Furness
Professor of Renal Pathology
University of Leicester

Professor David Graham, FRSE, FMedSci
Professor of Neuropathology
University of Glasgow

Professor John Harris, FMedSci
Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics
University of Manchester

Professor Nicholas Wright, FMedSci
Warden
Barts & The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine & Dentistry

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• Consultation Response [305.28k]

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