PROFITS AND LOSS

The investigation generated front page stories.But the terrible crime also spotlights the growing need for body parts.it's big business.Innumerable transplants are perfomed each year with tissue and related products that repair injured knees,relive bad backs,and replace damaged heart valves or burned skin.Tissue banks are regulated to identify,retrive and prepare medically suitable bone and tissue for future use.Tissue (bone,tendons,ligaments,skin,corneas,heart valves,blood vessles)can be recovered up to 24 hours after death.This differs from organ donation,such as hearts,lungs or kidneys,which requires amore immediate retrieval process because of the need for oxygen and blood flow."Tissue donation provides the last opporunity you have on earth to help someone," explains Bob Rigney,CEO of the American Association of tissue banks."We've found more and more ways to recycle the human body."But these high-tech procedures don't come cheap.Screening,procuring,storing and cleansing the tissue is expensive.It's about a billon-dollar industry with a steady growth rate.