New South Wales Consolidated Acts

HUMAN TISSUE ACT 1983 - SECT 32

32 Trading in tissue prohibited

(1) A person must not enter into, or offer to enter into, a contract or arrangement under which any person agrees, for valuable consideration, whether given or to be given to any such person or to any other person:

(a) to the sale or supply of tissue from any such person’s body or from the body of any other person, whether before or after that person’s death or the death of that other person, as the case may be, or

(b) to the post-mortem examination of any such person’s body after that person’s death or of the body of any other person after the death of that other person.

Maximum penalty: 40 penalty units or imprisonment for 6 months, or both.

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to or in respect of the sale or supply of tissue if the tissue has been subjected to processing or treatment and the sale or supply is made for the purpose of enabling the tissue to be used for therapeutic purposes, medical purposes or scientific purposes.

(3) Subsection (1) does not apply to or in respect of a contract or arrangement providing only for the reimbursement of any expenses necessarily incurred by a person in relation to the removal of tissue in accordance with this Act.

(4) Where the Minister considers it desirable by reason of special circumstances so to do, the Minister may, by instrument in writing, approve the entering into of a contract or arrangement that would, but for the approval, be void by virtue of subsection (5), and nothing in subsection (1) or (5) applies to or in respect of a contract or arrangement entered into in accordance with such an approval.

(5) A contract or arrangement entered into in contravention of this section is void.