'Bible of transplant ethics’ published

The Istanbul Declaration aimed at tackling transplant tourism and organ trafficking has been published in the Lancet.

Issue date: 7 July 2008

The Declaration has been created with the contributions of 152 experts from 78 countries. Adrian McNeil, Chief Executive, Human Tissue Authority, welcomed the publication of the Declaration:

“The international transplant community is wholeheartedly opposed to the poorest people in the world being exploited to fulfil the need for organs for transplantation.

“The need for organs way outstrips the supply, and while we should maintain our efforts to increase the supply of organs from ethical sources, it is unlikely that there will be a balance of supply and demand in the near future. When demand outstrips supply there is always a temptation to use unethical practices to source organs and the Istanbul Declaration addresses this.

“What we have in the Declaration is a ‘Bible for transplant ethics’ that has the aim of tackling transplant tourism, trafficking and commercialisation on an international scale. This is not a legally binding document, but we have seen similar declarations in other areas of medicine completely reshape the landscape.”

For more information or to interview Adrian, please contact Claire Bithell, Media Manager at the Human Tissue Authority on 0207 211 3439/ 07917 551 741

Professor Alexander Capron, USC Gould School of Law, Los Angeles, California, USA T) +1 213 740-2557 / +1 310 998-7902 E) acapron@law.usc.edu is also able to comment on this paper.

Notes to Editors:

About the Human Tissue Authority

As the regulator under the Human Tissue Act 2004 (HT Act), the HTA has a number of statutory functions:

Inform the public, professionals and the Secretary of State for Health about issues within our remit. We meet this requirement for professionals by providing guidance, including codes of practice, to support good practice.

Regulate, through licensing, a number of sectors and to carry out inspections to ensure licence conditions are being met. The licensed sectors are:

• Anatomy
• Post mortem services      
• Human application (transplantation of tissues and cells)
• Research
• Public display
  

To regulate, through a system of approvals, the donation from living people of solid organs, bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells for transplantation into others. The HTA also oversees the consent requirements of the HT Act for deceased organ donation.