Med News Today

FDA Cracking Down On Cadaver Parts

The Food and Drug Administration, while saying no major problems exist, are nonetheless increasing the number of inspections it conducts of companies supplying body parts, including bone tissue, from cadavers for transplant.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators say they have dramatically boosted inspections of companies that harvest cadaver body parts for transplant, acknowledging weaknesses in government oversight of the multibillion-dollar human tissue industry that last year was rocked by scandal.

The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration said the inspections turned up no serious problems. But an internal task force report urges agency officials to set up a method for tracking body parts from cadaver to transplant patient — a system that currently doesn't go that far.

The targeted companies remove bones, tendons, cartilage, heart valves and other non-organ parts from corpses. These tissues are used in roughly 1 million medical procedures in the United States each year, many of them for routine knee and back surgeries.

posted by nattietodd @ 12:37 PM