Human Tissue Act 2008

20 Informed consent not required for collection or use for specified purposes

Informed consent is not required for collection or use of human tissue for any of the following purposes:

(a)

the exercise by a person of that person’s powers under any law to collect or use tissue without consent, including (without limitation) powers of that kind exercised for either of the following purposes:

(i)

the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution, or punishment of offences; or

(ii)

the protection of the health or safety of members of the public:

(b)

the implementation, by using non-health-care tissue for donor analysis, of a direction or order of a court or tribunal:

(c)

the provision, for the medical benefit of another person or a child conceived but not born, and by using non-health-care tissue for donor analysis, of information about the individual from whom the non-health-care tissue was collected or derived, if—

(i)

it is not reasonably practicable to find that individual or, if he or she has died, a personal representative or family member of that individual; and

(ii)

all reasonable efforts have been made to ascertain whether that individual objected to the tissue being used for those purposes, and he or she appears not to have done so:

(d)

the performance of a post-mortem of a body that one of the following competent legal authorities has, under one of the following enactments, directed or ordered to be performed:

(i)

a coroner acting under section 31 of the Coroners Act 2006; and

(ii)

the High Court acting under section 41 of the Coroners Act 2006; and

(iii)

the Director-General of Health acting under section 78 of the Health Act 1956:

(e)

the carrying out, by using for a secondary purpose tissue that is a body or is collected from a living individual or a body, or by using non-health-care tissue for donor analysis, of research that has received the approval of an ethics committee (even though the ethics committee knew that informed consent had not been, and would not be, obtained for the research):

(f)

the carrying out, to assure or improve the quality of services, and by using for a secondary purpose tissue that is a body or is collected from a living individual or a body, or by using non-health-care tissue for donor analysis, of all or any of the following activities:

(i)

a professionally recognised quality assurance programme:

(ii)

an external audit of services:

(iii)

an external evaluation of services:

(g)

the testing or disposal of tissue that is a body or is collected from a living individual or a body, because—

(i)

that testing or disposal is or may be necessary to avoid endangering the health or safety of members of the public; or

(ii)

that disposal is necessary or desirable because all reasonable attempts have been made, but have failed, to return the tissue to a family member or other person to whom the tissue would otherwise be returned for disposal:

(h)

display by or on behalf of the responsible person and to enable people to pay their final respects to, or that is incidental to the funeral of, the dead individual:

(i)

burial, cremation, or other lawful disposal, by or on behalf of the responsible person, of the tissue concerned.