A decree published Thursday, April 28 at the “Official Journal” specifies the methods of reception and transport of bodies and creates an “Ethics, Scientific and Educational Committee”.
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The media benefits and the judicial consequences of the scandal of the “Charnier” of the University of Paris-Descartes, drifts linked to the conservation and the use of the remains at the center of the gift of the bodies, in Paris, pushed the government to strengthen the framework of the gift of bodies to science in the twenty-eight national establishments concerned, in application of the bioethics law of 2021.
A decree of Wednesday April 27, published the next day in the Official Journal, specifies the methods of receiving donors, with, in particular, the writing of a “revocable consent at any time co -signed by the manager of the structure of Home bodies within the mentioned establishment “.
The donor, to whom “no sum of money can be requested by the establishment”, “can designate a referent person, among his family or his relatives, who will be the interlocutor of the establishment”.
Regarding transportation to the center after the death of the donor, the “costs relating to the routing of the body” are now “fully supported by the establishment having collected consent”. The largest anatomical center in France, founded in 1953 and attached to the University of Paris-Descartes (become, in 2020, the University of Paris), the Center of Don of the Bodies left the families of the deceased paying the transport costs.
The center provided donors and their relatives with a list of five or six funeral carriers chosen by the establishment’s administration. And this, while several hundred empowered companies are listed on the prefectural lists in Ile-de-France.
“many points to clarify”
According to the decree, “the establishment determines the most suitable funeral type according to the nature of the activity practiced on the body. It takes into account the preference expressed by the donor during his consent to Don and, if necessary, the request expressed by the referent person he has appointed, by his family or his relatives “.
The decree opens the way to the “restitution” of the body or the ashes to relatives, and fixes its modalities, “according to the nature of the activity practiced on the body”.
He provides for the implementation within the centers of an “ethics, scientific and educational committee responsible for issuing an opinion on medical training programs and research programs that involve use of the body given to ends of medical and research education “.
The Revelations of L’Express , in November 2019, on the drifts at the Center de Don of the Bodies ( Body dismembered and unused, electricity failures, mass incineration, proliferation of flies, worms and rats, etc.), pushed the Paris prosecutor’s office to open judicial information in July 2020, relating to the conditions of conservation and Provision of bodies within the establishment. To date have been indicted of the chief of “attack on the integrity of a corpse” two ex-preparators of the center, as well as the University of Paris and Frédéric Dardel, the former president of Paris-Descartes ( 2011-2019). These revelations pushed the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Frédérique Vidal, to diligent an inspection and to administratively close the center, in November 2019.
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