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Recent Newspaper & Online Columns by Kate Scannell MD

Who really owns your spleen?

By Kate Scannell MD, Contributing columnist Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED IN PRINT 08/08/2010

BELIEVE IT or not, parts of your own body might not always belong to you.

Tony Bennett may have famously -- and figuratively -- left his heart in San Francisco. But with much less fanfare -- and, quite literally -- people routinely leave behind parts of their organs and tissues in hundreds of cities across the country every single day.

They leave biopsies of skin, breast, liver, prostate, bone marrow -- you name it -- to doctors, hospitals, and diagnostic centers. Sections of their colons, lungs, and limbs are removed during surgeries, sent to labs for pathologic examination, and ... then what?  Read More