New rules after Paris Descartes scandal

After receiving the documents from the institution authorized to receive the bodies, the person can consent to this donation “with a complete written declaration, dated and signed in his hand,” indicates the decree, which enters into force on Friday, April 29.

Committee “Ethics, Science and Education”.

The text also specified the methods of transporting and receiving the bodies, the conditions for conducting burials, returning the body or ashes, and the conditions for licensing and operating the institutions benefiting from the donations. It also provides for the establishment of an “ethical, scientific, and educational committee within these institutions that will be responsible for expressing an opinion on training programs and research projects that require the assistance of the bodies that have been subject to a gift.”

The government announced last year that regulations for body donation centers for science would be revised as part of a bioethics bill – adopted in June 2021 – in the wake of the Paris Descartes scandal.

In 2019, Express Weekly He revealed that the corpse donation center at this university had received in “inappropriate conditions” the remains of “thousands of people” who donated their bodies for science. The investigation, which opened after that, highlighted the “inactivity” of the officials of the prestigious Parisian institution for several decades.