Stop misusing the gift of life

In recent years, there has been a push for more people to give the gift of life by becoming organ and tissue donors. The TV commercials, radio ads, newspaper articles stress how donating a heart, liver or kidney can save someone�s life.

What they don�t say is that non-profit tissue banks often have an unholy alliance with for-profit businesses that take skin, heart valves, veins, tendons, corneas and bone from donated bodies. The body parts are resold for use in cosmetic surgery, medical products, and dental procedures�helping models have fuller lips and helping athletes and middle-aged men overcome injuries, not saving lives.

Tissue banks recover the body parts, sometimes processing and distributing the tissue, other times the tissue is shipped to for-profit firms for processing.

Federal law bars outright payment for vital organs, which must be taken once a person is declared brain dead, but allow non-profits to charge �reasonable fees.�

The fees are hefty and the for-profit human tissue industry is exploding with two way traffic�things like kidneys from babies in Columbia have been used to create blood clotting products, while corneas deemed too old for use in the United States are shipped overseas and sold in Germany and other European countries.

According to recent reports in Chicago and Orange County, Calif., newspapers, the trade is lucrative, and projected to hit $1 billion in three years.

Non-profit tissue banks have started for-profit entities to sell body parts they get for free, and in other cases for-profit entities founded non-profit tissues banks to solicit free cadavers (dead bodies) that can bring tens of thousands of dollars when fully harvested.

Executives at non-profit tissue banks often earn $100,000 salaries and double as vice presidents for their profit-making companies. Meanwhile some hospitals harvest skin to meet contracts with for-profit firms, while patients who desperately need skin for grafts after serious burns go lacking.

Profit motive and lack of governmental oversight may also be having deadly results. Several incidents have been reported where improperly, or unscreened tissue was implanted with debilitating affects. The gift of life turned out to be contaminated.

Organ donations are important and thousands await life-saving hearts, livers, and kidneys. Organ donors give the ultimate gift to help someone and get nothing in return. It�s time for those who are reaping huge profits on the backs of these noble souls to be put in check.