Djuna Elkan
Capstone, Anth 410
March 9, 2014
Ethics of Human Tissue Donation
Body donation is something that has become very important in the past few
decades. It helps save lives and creates new techniques of how to improve efficiency with
procedures. In the United States, since the late 1970’s body donation specifically toward
forensic anthropology facilities has grown rapidly. But not all countries agree with how
human tissue should be acquired and used. In the United Kingdom the Human Tissues
Act of 2004, which only allows human tissue to be used under specific conditions mainly
in the medical field (Parliament). When studying forensic anthropology this becomes an
obstacle in the advancement of fast paced taphenomic investigation, one of the premier
techniques for murder cases. The UK has a very strict code on the ways that tissues
should be handled, which the Queen, as well as the people continues to support. On the
other side of the pond, in the US, body donation has become a rather popular means of a
final burial place. Many different fields in the US take advantage of the taphonomic
research that body donation produces, including, entomology, osteology, ornithology, and
many more areas of scientific study that depend on research facilities to answer
hypotheses and questions. In this paper the topic of the ethics of body donation is asked,
regarding the differentiation between how the United States and United Kingdom view
how human tissue should be handled.
In the United States, body donation for medical purposes has been around for a
quite some time. But in the late 1970’s the University of Tennessee, Knoxville reluctantly
opened its doors to body donation. This was a form of scientific advancement that was
new and radical that no one had ever tried before. Dr. William Bass Ph.D., the founder of
what is now publically known as the ‘body farm’, had miss aged a burial site because of
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the degree of preservation of a body (Bass, 2003). His assumption was that the remains
were merely a year old, when in fact the deceased had been buried in an airtight casket
for over 50 years. He decided to open a facility to study these taphonomic changes and
teach others to analyze different situations with the deceased.
Currently, within the US, each state has there own laws about tissue donation.
Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas all have assimilated to the
accelerating advancements being made in the field of forensic anthropology and have
opened their own taphonomic research facilities that accept donated bodies to study its
decomposition. When donating a body to these facilities rigorous processes are required
to maintain the proper certifications to acquire the deceased after death. But as for the rest
of the bodies being researched, “donations [are] acquired through release by local
medical examiners, donation by family, or self-donation, with a small number coming
from other sources” (Christensen, 2006). The fact that this use of the deceased is growing
and creating new data that helps solve new and older murder cases with much fewer
errors is something that cannot be overlooked. But in some areas around the world, body
donation is something that should only be used by medical professionals.
Since 1961, the Human Tissues Act has dominated the availability of human
tissues used for medical purposes in the United Kingdom. This Act covers England,
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland making research on different aspects of the human
body very difficult. The Act was amended in 2004, but continues to limit the availability
of different tissues. Currently, the Human Tissues Act 2004 regulates “the removal,
storage and use of human tissue. This is defined as material that has come from a human
body and consists of, or includes, human cells” (Human Tissues Act 2004). This law
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protects people from being ‘butchered’ and used for research that would desecrate the
remains in any form that is not natural. It is still possible to donate your body to science,
but the medical professionals will take as little tissue as they can. This law is upheld by
the people, who continue to support it. But in many schools around the United Kingdom,
including the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Dundee, which are
two of the more prominent schools for forensic anthropology have continued to use
samples acquired legally to study a very small aspect of forensic anthropology. This
creates the issue of the personal advancements of the facilities. They are forced to set
aside hands on activities and use as much research that is available to the students as
possible. In light of the absence of human tissues, they also have learned to adapt by
using pigs. Seeing as they have the same general anatomy as humans, but it is not the
same as working with human tissues. The main concerns that lead to the creation of the
Human Tissues Act were to protect the deceased individual from unwanted dissection.
The act also protects individuals from DNA ‘theft’ when tissue is taken without consent.
The Human Tissues Act as advanced since the 1960’s, but continues to put the good of
the people ahead of the scientific advancements that human tissues give.
Although both techniques advance the forensic anthropological field, they are
dependent on the general publics view on human tissue donation. In the United States the
public has begun to truly appreciate how their bodies are being used to accelerate science.
At the University of Tennessee alone, more than 100 people donate their bodies to the
advancement of forensic fieldwork a year (Raymunt, 2010). This type of donation used to
only be seen within medical schools, but is slowly advancing other forensic practices,
giving students an opportunity to participate in the study of taphonomic changes in the
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human body. These advancements made through taphonomic research rapidly changes
how to identify individuals going through the decomposition process. This is one of the
key goals in forensic anthropology, which would not have been made possible without
the use of human tissue. In the United Kingdom, when studying taphonomy Sus scrofa,
more commonly known as Pigs, must be used to study the changes in their taphonomic
state. Although pigs are very close to humans anatomically, they still lack some of the
characteristics we see in human decomposition. With the use of human tissue scientists
and anthropologists can learn much more about how the human body decays.
Human tissue donation is something that is really up to the person who is
donating their body. The human body is a precious thing, and we have evolved to
appreciate. It is important to continuing to advance the field of forensic anthropology and
other sciences to continue gaining more information about an area of science we know
little about. The use of human tissues to advance our understanding of how the human
body reacts to certain conditions after death is an area that is looked over quite often and
continues to puzzle investigators of death. This type of tissue use is still widely debated
because of the ethical issue behind body donation and who has the authority to donate
remains. Death is a very touchy subject, but its investigation through the best means
necessary should always be on the top of scientists list.
Citations:
-Bass, W. M., & Jefferson, J. (2003). Death's acre: Inside the legendary forensic lab the
Body Farm where the dead do tell tales. New York: Putnam.
-Elizabith II. (November, 2004). Human Tissues Act 2004: 2004 Chapter 30. Printed in
the UK by The Stationery Office Limited under the authority and superintendence of
Carol Tullo, Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and Queen’s Printer of Acts of
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Parliament. Retrieved from:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/30/pdfs/ukpga_20040030_en.pdf [March 9,
2014]
-Christensen, A. (2006). Moral Considerations in Body Donation for Scientific Research:
A Unique Look at the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility.
Bioethics, 20(3), 136-145.
-Human Tissue Authority. (July 2010). Human Tissues Act 2004. Retrieved from:
http://www.hta.gov.uk/legislationpoliciesandcodesofpractice/legislation/humantissueact.
cfm [March 6, 2014]
-Raymunt, Monica. (December 2010). Down on the Body Farm: Inside the Dirty World
of Forensic Anthropology. The Atlantic. Retrieved from:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/down-on-the-body-farm-insidethe-dirty-world-of-forensic-science/67241/ [March 4, 2014]