Tissue Donation

In 2011, Jonn Flath, a former high school varsity athlete, died suddenly while working out with other cadets in an Air Force ROTC program. As he died outside of the hospital, Flath was not a candidate for organ donation. However, because he was registered as an organ and tissue donor, OneLegacy, a tissue procurement agency, took his skin, bones, and heart valves to be sold as medical devices before the coroner was able to perform an autopsy. His father said that he pleaded with OneLegacy to delay harvesting Jonn's tissues until after the coroner's examination so that the family could find out why their son had died, but was refused. "You can't begin to imagine what it's like to learn that they can't complete the autopsy because they took your son's heart."

 

A 2019 LA Times article, “In the Rush to Harvest Body Parts, Death Investigations Have Been Upended”, revealed that organ procurement organizations (OPOs) in California have been harvesting tissues from bodies BEFORE the coroner was able to examine them. Thus, in over 20 cases, the coroner could no longer determine (due to the amount of tissue destruction caused by the harvest procedure) the actual cause of death or whether these people had died as the result of a crime. Families were left not knowing what caused their loved ones’ death and were denied justice in cases of probable homicide. The damage this lack of closure and denial of justice has had on bereaved families is incalculable.

​

Donated tissues often end up being used for cosmetic or reconstructive surgery, which  may surprise donors who were not informed of this. A recent X post described one such surgery using donated human cadaver skin as "so f*ing cool and cyberpunk."

​

And donating your corpse to science can also be problematic. In 2023, Cedric Lodge, the manager of Harvard’s morgue, was charged with selling brains, hearts, skin, and other body parts to members of several Facebook groups that were platforms for buying and selling “oddities”. In addition, Lodge allowed two oddities traffickers to enter the school’s morgue to shop for body parts. The indictment noted that the traffickers requested human skin to be turned into leather.

​

Fortunately, you do not need to be a registered donor to be able to make anatomical gifts, you just need people you trust to inform hospitals of your wishes. Our suggestion is to stay off organ and tissue donor lists, and instead inform your family that you would like to donate your tissue after you're biologically dead, and all questions regarding you cause of death have been answered to their satisfaction.