Burn centers buy sporadically. They might have seven burns one week and none for the next three months. Larry Hierholzer, the executive director of the Orange County Eye and Tissue Bank in Santa Ana, worked for a skin bank in Torrance that folded because spotty sales couldn't cover its costs. With LifeCell, the Orange County bank always has a customer. The companies would not exist without the tissue banks.
Tissue banks ask for the donation at the time of death.
Banks tell families that the donor's skin is going to help burn victims and that the bank is a nonprofit operation. The tissue banks don't mention cosmetic uses in their consent forms. Nor do they mention their alliances with the private companies making plastic- surgery products. Last week, the Orange County Eye and Tissue Bank's parent company, Baltimore-based Tissue Banks International, said it was planning to change its consent forms in Southern California. Spokeswoman Toby Bernstein said the pilot program will give people the option of donating skin for cosmetic surgery.