BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1519
Page 1
Date of Hearing: January 16, 2008
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS, TOURISM, AND
INTERNET MEDIA
Betty Karnette, Chair
AB 1519 (Ma) - As Amended: January 7, 2008
SUBJECT : Human Remains: Commercial Display.
SUMMARY : Prohibits any person from displaying human remains to
the public for commercial purposes without first obtaining a
permit from the county. Specifically, this bill :
1)Prohibits display of human remains to the public for
commercial purposes without first obtaining a permit issued by
the county.
2)Provides that a county may issue a permit to any person only
upon a determination by the appropriate county agency or
department that the person has provided valid written
authorization to display human remains for consideration from
specified individuals.
3)Provides exceptions from the permit requirement for display of
human remains that are more than 100 years old, consist solely
of human teeth or hair, are part of the ordinary display or
viewing of the deceased at a funeral establishment or part of
a similar funeral or memorial, are an object of religious
veneration, or are in the possession of a museum facility,
with certain qualifications.
4)Provides further exception for utilization of human remains
consistent with the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.
5)Defines "commercial purposes" as either a display for which
the public is charged a fee or other consideration as a
condition of viewing, or display for which an exhibitor earns
a profit.
6)Defines "exhibitor" as a person or entity who shows or puts
on, or contracts to show or put on, a temporary public display
of human remains.
7)Defines "museum facility" as a public or private nonprofit
institution that is accredited by the American Association of
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Museums or is a part of an accredited college or university,
and that is organized on a permanent basis for essentially
educational or aesthetic purposes and that owns or uses
tangible objects, cares for those objects, and exhibits them
to the general public on a regular basis.
8)Provides a civil penalty for violation of $10,000.
9)Makes legislative findings and declarations.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown.
COMMENTS :
1)Recent Amendments: This bill was substantially amended on
January 7, 2008 to delete its entire prior contents and insert
the present text.
2)Author's Statement : According to the author, "(E)xhibitors,
who often obtain the bodies from China, run galleries and
displays of unwilled remains in distasteful poses generating
millions in revenue claiming the case of providing the public
with health awareness. While the exhibits may be informative,
China's gross human rights violations has led to a general
public concern that bodies exhibited were once prisoners,
government and political dissenters, hospital patients and the
poor. Without written consent from the deceased, one is
hard-pressed to find evidence that the bodies in the displays
wanted to be there. It is honorable to donate anatomical gifts
in order to continue to advance medicine and science education
for the betterment of society. However, the State must protect
unwilling and unclaimed bodies from the unethical treatment
and exploitation of profiteers.
"AB 1519 protects the State's Anatomical Gifts and future
potential donors. The generosity of anatomical donors provides
medical students with information to save lives, further
research, and prevents diseases. This generosity cannot be
abused. Donors must feel secure that their anatomical donation
will not end up being paraded around the state on display. AB
1519 respects the ethical tradition of maintaining the
integrity and rights of bodies after death."
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3)Historic background : The issue of using human remains for
medical and educational research is a long and sometimes
contentious one. "The empirical study of human anatomy took
off with Leonardo da Vinci's sketches in the 15th century; the
earliest extant articulated skeleton dates from 1543. As
medicine advanced, physicians were expected to have a
systematic understanding of the human body's inner workings.
By the beginning of the 19th century, Europe's demand for
human remains far outstripped supply. In England, home of many
of the world's preeminent medical institutions, grave robbing
became so commonplace that certain cemeteries were famous for
battles between grieving families and marauding medical
students. To contain the problem, the government passed the
Anatomy Act of 1832, allowing doctors to take any corpse that
was left unclaimed in a city morgue or hospital." (Carney,
Inside India's Underground Trade in Human Remains, Wired
Magazine Issue 15:12,
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/15-12/ff_bones?cur
rentPage=all, retrieved January 9, 2008.)
At this same time in history, the famous utilitarian
philosopher Jeremy Bentham made perhaps the first anatomical
gift donation, giving himself to his university in June of
1832. He did so saying, "the object being two fold first to
communicate curious interesting & highly important knowledge &
secondly to show that the primitive horror at dissection
originates in ignorance & is kept up by misconception and that
the human body when dissected instead of being an object of
disgust is as much more beautiful than any other piece of
mechanism as it is more curious and wonderful?" (Marmoy, The
Auto-Icon of Jeremy Bentham at University College, London,
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/marmoy.htm#6b ,
retrieved January 9, 2008.) His body remains on display to
this day.
While passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832 may have put an end
to grave robbing in England, allegations continue to exist of
grave robbing in other countries, especially in India and
China, where commercial trade in human remains continue.
(Carney, IBID.)
4)Controversy Over Source of Bodies in Plasticized Human Remains
Exhibitions: According to its website, promoters of Bodies
Revealed (one of several exhibitions touring the world which
presents plasticized human remains to the public as
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entertainment) claim that, "Using real human specimens,
painstakingly prepared and respectfully displayed, the Bodies
Revealed exhibition lets visitors of all ages explore deep
within the human body in a way that informs but doesn't
overwhelm?.Our bodies are our most important possession. They
are intricately developed machines; more complex and wondrous
than all the computers and gadgetry we surround ourselves with
today. Yet many of us do not know what makes us tick-how we
function, what we need to survive, what destroys us, what
revives us. Bodies Revealed, made possible through the process
of Polymer Preservation, is an attempt to remedy that lack of
knowledge by presenting to the lay public material that was
previously only available to the medical profession: a
three-dimensional tour of the human body."
Presentation of the human body in this "plasticized" form is
profitable business. One tour, Bodies?The Exhibition,
reportedly earned revenues of $30.1 million dollars last year,
and cleared $7.4 million in profits. There are 11 such
traveling shows currently on tour.
The sources of the bodies for the displays are two facilities
based in Dalian, China. One is operated by Dr. Gunther von
Hagens, the man who invented the plasticizing technique which
these shows exploit. The other is Dr. Sui Hongjin, a former
von Hagens employee. Dr. von Hagens claims to have signed
authorization from the persons in his touring exhibition,
granting permission for his use of their bodies. However, Dr.
Hongjin admits that the persons in his shows were once
indigents or unclaimed bodies given to him by authorities with
rights of disposition; therefore he does not have permission
from the donors or their families to display the remains.
Critics assert that many of the remains used in the
exhibitions are actually those of executed prisoners. The
criticism may have some foundation. The Chinese city of Dalian
is close to three prison camps. According to Amnesty
International, China's communist authorities account for 75%
of the world's executions, purportedly executing 3,400 people
in 2004 by shooting them in the head or the back of the neck.
In 2004, after a story in the German magazine Der Spiegel
asserted that some bodies in the Chinese facility had bullet
holes in their skulls, Dr. von Hagens agreed to return seven
corpses to China -- admitting that the bodies used in his
exhibitions might have come from executed prisoners.
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In response to the criticism, the Chinese government has set
out strict new procedures for the use and international
transport of human corpses and body parts, to be effective as
of
August 1, 2006. "A new regulation bans the trade of corpses
and commercial activities involving corpses. No organization
or individual is allowed to accept body donations except
medical institutes, medical schools, medical research
institutes and forensic research institutes. Those in receipt
of bodies should arrange interment after use. The exit and
entry of bodies for medical and scientific purposes must be
approved in accordance with the Regulation on Human Hereditary
Resources issued by the State Council and the Quarantine
Regulation of Special Medical Items issued by the Ministry of
Health and the State Quality and Quarantine Administration.
No other reasons for international transport will be approved,
says the regulation." (Xinhua News Agency July 15, 2006, China
Regulates Use, Int'l Movement of Bodies and Parts,
http://210.72.21.20/english/government/174802.htm, retrieved
January 9, 2008.)
5)Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UGA) Establishes Procedure for
Donation of Bodies: California's Uniform Anatomical Gift Act
regulates the donations of anatomical gifts. The act
specifies who may make a gift and directs the manner in which
a gift may be made, amended, revoked, or refused to be made.
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws
(NCCUSL) first proposed the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act in
1968, and it was adopted by all 50 states. The act was
subsequently revised and adopted by
26 states in 1987, including California. In 2006, NCCUSL
proposed revisions to the act to help to address the critical
need for donated organs by providing additional ways in which
individuals may make organ, eye, and tissue donations.
Last year, California joined other 16 states in revising our
version of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (Health and Safety
Code section 7150, et seq.), with passage of AB 1689 (Lieber),
Chapter 629, Statutes of 2007. That measure, in relevant
part, clarified and broadened the ability of potential donors
and their survivors to donate bodies and organs for medical
and scientific purposes.
a) Who Can Make Anatomical Donations ? Persons who may make
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an anatomical gift before a donor's death are: the donor if
the donor is an adult, or if the donor is a minor and is
either an emancipated minor or between 15 and 18 years of
age, only upon the written consent of a parent or guardian.
Also, an agent of the donor can make an anatomical gift,
provided that the power of attorney for health care or
other record expressly permits the agent to make an
anatomical gift. (Health and Safety Code section 7150.15)
An anatomical gift of a decedent's body or part may be made
by any member of the following classes of persons who is
reasonably available, in the following order of priority:
(1) An agent of the decedent at the time of death who could
have made an anatomical gift under subdivision (b) of
Section 7150.15 immediately before the decedent's death.
(2) The spouse or domestic partner of the decedent.
(3) Adult children of the decedent.
(4) Parents of the decedent.
(5) Adult siblings of the decedent.
(6) Adult grandchildren of the decedent.
(7) Grandparents of the decedent.
(8) An adult who exhibited special care and concern for the
decedent during the decedent's lifetime.
(9) The persons who were acting as the guardians or
conservators of the person of the decedent at the time of
death.
(10) Any other person having the authority to dispose of
the decedent's body, including, but not limited to, a
coroner, medical examiner, or hospital administrator.
(Health and Safety Code section 7150.40)
b) How Is An Anatomical Gift Made ? A donor may make an
anatomical gift either by indicating that the donor has
made an anatomical gift on the donor's driver's license or
identification card, directly through the Donate Life
California Organ and Tissue Donor Registry Internet Web
site, in a will, or during a terminal illness or injury of
the donor, by any form of communication that clearly
expresses the donor's wish. If made orally, the statement
must be addressed to at least two adults, at least one of
whom is a disinterested witness. The witnesses shall
memorialize this communication in a writing and sign and
date the writing. (Health and Safety Code section 7150. 20)
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Persons authorized to make anatomical gifts on behalf of
the deceased (as authorized in Health and Safety Code
section 7150.40) may do so by a document of gift signed by
the person making the gift or by that person's oral
communication that is electronically recorded or is
contemporaneously reduced to a record and signed by the
individual receiving the oral communication.
c) What Limitations Exist For Uses of Anatomical Gifts ?
Under the UGA, an anatomical gift may be made to any of the
following persons named in the document of gift: a
hospital, accredited medical school, dental school,
college, university, or organ procurement organization, for
research or education, an individual designated by the
person making the anatomical gift if the individual is the
recipient of the part, subject to certain conditions, and,
an eye bank, or tissue bank. (Health and Safety Code
section 7150.50)
Further limitations are placed upon the uses donation may
be put to. The UGA specifies that an anatomical gift may
only be used for transplantation, therapy, research, or
education. In addition, sale or purchase of human body
parts is expressly prohibited by law. (Health and Safety
Code section 7150.75)
While county coroners are required to cooperate with
procurement organizations to maximize the opportunity to
recover anatomical gifts for the purpose of
transplantation, therapy, research, or education, they are
expressly forbidden from removing any part of a decedent
under the jurisdiction of a coroner for transplantation,
therapy, research, or education unless the part is the
subject of an anatomical gift. The body of a decedent under
the jurisdiction of the coroner shall not be delivered to a
person for research or education unless the body is the
subject of an anatomical gift. (Health and Safety Code
section 7151.15)
6)Position of Anatomists: The American Association of Clinical
Anatomists (AACA) is the only national association which
represents anatomists. According to their website, it exists
to "advance the science and art of clinical anatomy and
promote the personnel and resources associated with its
practice, to encourage research and publication in the
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discipline, and to maintain high curricular and professional
standards in the teaching of anatomy."
The AACA does not yet have a formal position on AB 1519;
however, their Anatomical Services Committee has drafted the
following position in response to the issues addressed in AB
1519. It is worth noting that the co-chair of this committee,
Brandi Schmitt, is the System-wide Director of Anatomical
Services for the University of California.
"Draft language on human body display from AACA:
" The AACA supports the education of the general public through
the display of human anatomical materials, provided those
materials have been legally and ethically obtained.
"The displaying venue should comply with federal, state, and
local laws and regulations on public health and safety.
"Rather than for mere monetary gain or exhibitionism, the
public display of these materials should be dignified,
respectful, and fulfill a stated scientific educational
objective.
"The study of human anatomy for the purpose of improving the
human condition, benefits us all."
7)Author's Amendments : The author will offer the following
amendments in committee:
a) Page 3, line 4, strike the words "earns a profit" and
insert, "accepts payment or other consideration"
b) Page 3, line 17, following the word "county," insert the
phrase, "where the human remains will be displayed"
c) Page 3, line 28, following the word, "paid," insert the
phrase, "or offered other consideration to"
d) Page 3, line 33, strike the words "ten thousand dollars
($10,000)" and insert, "up to ten thousand dollars for each
violation"
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e) Page 3, line 36, strike the phrase, "the appropriate
county agency or department," and insert, "county health
department"
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Laogai Research Foundation
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Dana Mitchell / A.,E.,S.,T. & I.M. /
(916) 319-3450