The House gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill that changes regulations around cadavers and donations of “anatomical gifts.”
The bill rectifies a situation that has left dead bodies in limbo at the Chief Medical Officer’s quarters, and it nixes a provision in current law that allows physicians to obtain dead bodies for research without prior consent from the deceased. It also reinstates an organ and tissue donation working group, which expired last January, to explore ways to increase donations in the state.
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who introduced the legislation, described its contents in blunt terms: “This is a bill about dead bodies.”
Donahue said was researching the Vermont State Cemetery when she stumbled upon a discriminatory relic in state law. Doctors can request bodies for the use “anatomical science” that would otherwise have been disposed of at state expense.
“It seems a little unfair that if you’re poor and your body has to be disposed of by the state, we can send you off to medical students without your preconsent,” Donahue said.
When the House Human Services Committee took up Donahue’s bill, Health Commissioner Harry Chen called their attention to another quirk in cadaver-related law, and the bill was amended to address this.
Current law allows funeral homes to take the appropriate steps to dispose of dead bodies when the decedent has left no directives and when no one else assumes responsibility, but it does not extend the same authority to the chief medical officer. As a result, the officer is left keeping unclaimed bodies “on ice” — he currently has three in his custody.
Donahue explained that, in the past, bodies of the deceased were returned to their town of origin, but in recent years, towns have been turning them down.
H.178 would allow the chief medical officer to cremate unclaimed bodies (after making a good faith effort to contact anyone who might claim them), and, if the remains go unclaimed for three years, to dispose of them at that point.
