Here We Go Again!

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2...#chronological

Human Tissues recovered by Donor Referral Services (DRS)

Audience: Surgeons, dentists, hospital surgical service managers and risk managers
[Posted 08/31/2006] FDA notified healthcare professionals that human tissues recovered by Donor Referral Services (DRS) may not have met FDA requirements for donor eligibility. While no adverse reactions associated with these tissues have yet been reported, and subsequent processing should reduce the potential risks of infectious disease transmission, healthcare providers who were supplied with these tissues are being notified of the potentially increased risk for infectious disease transmission.

FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are strongly recommending that healthcare providers inform their patients who received tissues initially recovered by DRS that they may have received tissue from donors for whom adequate donor eligibility determinations were not performed, and offer patients access to appropriate infectious disease testing. The relevant communicable diseases for which a tissue donor is required to be tested are HIV-1 and 2, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, and syphilis. Further recommendations for testing are posted on the CDC website at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/tissu...plantsFAQ.html. FDA will continue its investigation into this matter and will issue further public health updates, as needed.

[August 30, 2006 - Public Health Notification - FDA]

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Just read this interesting book concerning organ donations. Quite an eye opener.

Body Brokers by Annie Cheney

(from Amazon.com)

Book Description
Body Brokers is an audacious, disturbing, and compellingly written investigative exposé of a little known aspect of the “death care” world: the lucrative business of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts.

Every year human corpses meant for anatomy classes, burial, or cremation find their way into the hands of a shadowy group of entrepreneurs who profit by buying and selling human remains. While the government has controls on organs and tissue meant for transplantation, these “body brokers” capitalize on the myriad other uses for dead bodies that receive no federal oversight whatsoever: commercial seminars to introduce new medical gadgetry; medical research studies and training courses; and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests. A single corpse used for these purposes can generate up to $10,000.

As journalist Annie Cheney found while reporting on this subject over the course of three years, when there’s that much money to be made with no federal regulation, there are all sorts of shady (and fascinating) characters who are willing to employ questionable practices—from deception and outright theft -- to acquire, market, and distribute human bodies and parts. In Michigan and New York she discovers funeral directors who buy corpses from medical schools and supply the parts to surgical equipment companies and associations of surgeons. In California, she meets a crematorium owner who sold the body parts of people he was supposed to cremate, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. In Florida, she attends a medical conference in a luxury hotel, where fresh torsos are delivered in large coolers and displayed on gurneys in a room normally used for banquets. “That torso that you’re living in right now is just flesh and bones. To me, it’s a product,” says the New Jersey-based broker presiding over the torsos. Tracing the origins of body brokering from the “resurrectionists” of the 19th century to the entrepreneurs of today, Cheney chronicles how demand for cadavers has long driven unscrupulous funeral home, crematorium and medical school personnel to treat human bodies as commodities.

Gripping, often chilling, and sure to cause a reexamination of the American way of death, Body Brokers is a captivating work of first-person reportage.

Here is the accredited tissue bank list from American Association of Tissue Banks.

http://www.aatb.org/

Before my ACDF 5-6 w/ allograft was performed, I was very curious to learn exaclty what was going to be placed in my spine. The doctor readily showed me samples of the "purple" titanium screws and plate

BUT

very little was told to me about the allograft. Just that it was "treated donor bone." I was curious to learn if "it" was a piece of bone. Which bone? Could it be pressed bone? Ground bone?

Was it possible to learn where it had come from (tissue bank) and whom (cadaver donor) ?

No was the reply...

So I tried not to worry about it and tried to remain thankful and positive that someone readily donated parts that were going to help me.

Just lately I found a bit more information about allografts at this website. For those interested this site shows the various types of spine allografts a doctor can use.

http://www.accesslifenet.org/graft_verti.php

The patient info link explains FAQs about allografts.

http://www.accesslifenet.org/patient.php

BIB,

After this last surgery, I had a visiting nurse come to my home...I was shocked to hear her say that she would never donate her organs....She said you might think I am cruel, especially since I am a nurse, but she said you have never seen what they do when they harvest the organs. She was an ICU nurse on the weekends. She said that they must keep the body alive until the organs are removed and it is a bit barbaric. She said that the helicoptors come to the hospital and line up waiting for the parts to be removed. She said the way they are removed too is not what most people think....She seemed to act as though it was a business...as everything else in the health care business and she said after watching a few of these she changed her own card from donor to "no" donor... Interesting....