Stolen Heads Shine a Light on Body Part Donation

March 10, 2022 — It’s not your typical theft, however it’s positively one which grabs your consideration.

Last weekend in Denver, thieves broke right into a parked truck and stole a blue-and-white field labeled “exempt human specimen.” Turns out these specific specimens have been donated human heads.

While Denver police proceed their seek for the stolen property, many are left questioning how donated heads — and different physique elements — are sourced and used within the first place.

In this case, the field of heads was headed to an organization known as Science Care, primarily based in Phoenix, AZ. The firm payments itself because the world’s main physique donation authority, connecting donors and pharmaceutical corporations, medical machine makers, academic establishments, and well being care organizations. In this case, the stolen field was going again to Science Care after a medical coaching occasion.

“Science Care links donors who choose to donate their body to science with medical researchers and educators all over the world, leading to medical research and training that improves the quality of life for all of us,” says Tricia Hammett, CEO and program director on the firm. “As the first accredited non-transplant tissue bank in the world, we pride ourselves on compliance and safety in everything we do.”

It’s essential to grasp the distinction between this sort of donation program and the organ and tissue transplant business. The latter is ruled by the federal authorities and works to find and transport organs and tissues for the greater than 100,000 Americans on the nationwide transplant ready checklist. The former sort of program stays largely unregulated and isn’t concerned in transplantation.

Instead, non-transplant tissue donation can result in many various outcomes. One instance is taking cadaver tissue and utilizing it for medical and surgical functions. Think ACL restore, whereby a cadaver tendon replaces the dwelling broken ligament, giving the recipient a brand new lease on knee well being. Or harvesting cadaver veins to make use of in coronary heart bypass surgical procedures. Both are widespread and ship higher high quality of life.

Other makes use of for cadaver tissue embrace medical analysis and educating. Medical faculties depend upon these donations to teach their college students. Research establishments work with donated human tissues to advance therapies for a bunch of medical situations. These can embrace quite a lot of sorts of most cancers, coronary heart illness, orthopedics, and even psychological well being. By utilizing organ and body-part donations, medical surgical college students may also discover ways to carry out organ and tissue transplants, training their expertise on the donated elements earlier than advancing to the true, life-saving procedures.

Donated tissues may also play a job within the growth of medical and surgical units, even robotics for medical functions. This can result in much less invasive procedures, with quicker restoration instances, and might apply to a bunch of surgical procedures.

So about these stolen human heads, particularly — how would possibly they be helpful to science? Researchers would possibly use them to check human brains for the development of Alzheimer’s therapy, as an illustration. Or scientists might examine mind tissue to raised perceive how the mind regulates feelings or studying.

Thefts just like the one in Denver stay uncommon, and the investigation continues considerably beneath the radar as a consequence of its delicate nature. Hammett says the corporate is working intently with Denver authorities for a decision: “We are doing everything we can to locate the stolen tissue and protect the community.”