Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Pathology: coming in from the cold

  • Published:
Cell and Tissue Banking Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Following the UK’s organ retention scandals that occurred a decade ago, politicians unleashed a deluge of well-intentioned but naïve and unnecessarily burdensome regulations that have progressively stymied human tissue-based research, stifling development of improved diagnostic and prognostic tests as well as discovery of new treatments based on sound knowledge of human-specific biology. For the UK to maintain a leading role in medical research, more sensible levels of regulation need to be introduced that recognise differences between tissue from donors who have passed-away and surgical tissue that is surplus to diagnostic requirements and that otherwise will be incinerated. While it is important to reassure the public that research using their tissues will be conducted within an approved ethical framework, it is equally important to ensure that, as hospital staff and academic researchers, we are able to fulfil our unwritten covenant with patients to do our utmost to seek better diagnostic assays and more predictive prognostic indicators, while collaborating with our colleagues in academia and industry and hence bring hope to patients with illnesses for which no effective treatments are yet available. There is a clear case for introducing an opt-out system as the default to allow all surplus surgical tissues to be immediately available for research, concomitant with an education campaign. This is the optimal and most ethical approach to ensure the wishes of the vast majority of patients are respected by allowing their residual surgical tissues and relevant clinical information to be made available for research without the current levels of obstruction and hindrance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Clemente J et al (2008) Pharmaceutical expenditure, total health-care expenditure and GDP. Health Econ 17:1187–1206

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Foster CS, Dodson AR, Ambroisine L et al (2009) Hsp-27 expression at diagnosis predicts poor clinical outcome in prostate cancer independent of ETS-gene rearrangement. Br J Cancer 101:1137–1144

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • National Cancer Research Institute Pathology Taskforce (2009) Fostering the role of pathology in research 2009. http://www.ncri.org.uk/includes/publications/reports/NCRI_PathologyReport_electronic2.pdf

  • Scattereggia J (2010) Financial Times Global Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Conference 2009. IDrugs 13:26–29

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tay SK et al (2009) Global discovery of primate-specific genes in the human genome. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:12019–12024

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Varki A et al (2008) Explaining human uniqueness: genome interactions with environment, behaviour and culture. Nat Rev Genet 9:749–763

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Yao S, Bee A, Brewer D et al (2010) PRKC-ζ Expression promotes the aggressive phenotype of human prostate cancer cells and is a novel target for therapeutic intervention. Genes Cancer 1:444–464

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher S. Foster.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Foster, C.S. Pathology: coming in from the cold. Cell Tissue Bank 12, 25–27 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10561-010-9211-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10561-010-9211-7

Keywords

Navigation