�鶹��ý

THE important but controversial Human Tissue Act, which received royal assent last month, requires patients or their relatives to give consent before researchers can use their tissue samples (�鶹��ý, 3 July, p 5). The new law is intended to prevent any more scandals like that in 1999, when it emerged that doctors at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool had retained organs from dead children without the parents’ consent. But during the bill’s passage through Parliament the Medical Research Council (MRC) warned that it would prevent scientists making links back to the patients and thus to other…