Jul 19 2012
NPR: Little Regulation Poses Problems Tracking Tissue
In the United States, almost 1.5 million medical products are used each year for surgeries made with tissue taken from cadavers. For tissue to be safe, the donor must be carefully screened. Was she a drug user? Did he have HIV? Those would rule out using that tissue. Then the tissue has to be taken from the body under sterile conditions, processed in a precise way to prevent contamination but not weaken the tissue, then stored at exact temperatures and thrown out when it reaches an expiration date (Shapiro and Bartlett, 7/18).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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