This has endless possibilities.  Should foreskins be handed reverently to
the parents after neonatal circumcision (a barbarous tribal relict)?  What
about the used swabs from an intra-abdominal procedure?  Excised tumors?
What about blood samples?  The slides that were cut from the blocks that are
being returned?  Maybe we could hold a competition for the most original
suggestion.
Adrian Leek.


-----Original Message-----
From: Terry.Marshall@rgh-tr.trent.nhs.uk
[mailto:Terry.Marshall@rgh-tr.trent.nhs.uk]
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 6:03 AM
To: alexander.nader@wgkk.sozvers.at; histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: RE: returning tissue blocks to relatives


Yes, we have parted with a few. The answer to the question is that it
enables the relatives to complete their period of grief/mourning when these
have been buried or cremated. Yes, the NHS, the most underfunded health
service in what used to be civilisation is paying for the burials too.

If you think this is total bullshit, so do I.

Terry L Marshall
Histopathologist
Rotherham General Hospital, Yorkshire


I am disturbed by the suggestion from the U.K. that tissue blocks from
autopsies be returned to relatives of the deceased.
I cannot see what use the tissue blocks from an autopsy would be to
relatives.
Taking them out of the pathology lab system seems to be a formula for ending
all academic research in human pathology.

Allen A. Smith, Ph.D.
School of Graduate Medical Sciences
   Podiatric Medicine and Surgery
Barry University
Miami Shores, Florida