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FDA issues body parts warning
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 1, 2006
For the second time in a year, people who received tendons, cartilage and other parts from donated cadavers are being urged to get tested for hepatitis and the AIDS virus because of scandals involving tissue suppliers. How much risk do they face? Answering that is tough right now because federal officials will not say how many people around the country had already received tissue by the time recalls were announced. Patients may not even be aware they received cadaver tissue, which is used for everything from back surgery to dental implants. Not all doctors even tell their patients they'll be getting donated human tissue. Doctors themselves often don't know where the tissue came from. More than 1.3-million procedures each year - ranging from knee repairs to cornea transplants to spine surgeries - use tissue from donated cadavers. Most are supplied by reputable companies and do a lot of good, but the industry is little regulated. On Aug. 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down Philip Guyett Jr. and Donor Referral Services of Raleigh, N.C., citing "serious deficiencies" in manufacturing practices. On Wednesday, the FDA urged doctors to contact patients who received tissue from the firm, saying that additional information from the ongoing investigation "has heightened our concern" about the situation.
[Last modified September 1, 2006, 01:53:09]
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