It is surveying 8,000 people to find out what information people want. The president of the tissue bank association, Dr. Richard Kagan, a Cincinnati burn doctor who also helps run a tissue bank, promised in May that the association would act quickly to address public concerns. He said the association would work on new rules regarding informed consent, to make sure that donors knew their loved ones' body parts might be sold, and that the association would make burn victims a priority for skin donations. Both of those topics are up for discussion at the tissue bank convention, but no changes have been adopted. As you're aware, businesses make business decisions.
Tissue banks are businesses, and they have to make business decisions.
And I don't know that AATB can mandate what they do. In some cases, tissue banks are changing on their own. Along with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, LifeNet in Virginia, the country's largest organ procurement agency and one of the largest tissue banks, is no longer sending skin Collagenesis. Others, however, are looking to the AATB for guidance. In North Carolina, the Carolina Organ Procurement Agency illustrates the dilemma tissue and organ agencies face.