Medical uses of placenta

Press, 27 April 1984, Page 5

Medical uses of placenta

Medical use could be made of the human placenta, a waste product that now goes up in smoke, a meeting of the Canterbury Hospital Board heard yesterday. Mr Bill Utley said hormonal extracts from the placenta were used overseas for medical treatment but New Zealand legislation forbade the practice. Instead all human waste was incincerated. The subject arose through a Health Department circular which asked hospital boards to be sensitive to requests by Maori people who wished to take home the placenta for burial,

after the birth of a child. A British midwife had told Mr Utley that selling the placenta for hormonal extraction had provided money for quite a few midwifery extras. “This is an area which we are just wasting instead of diversifying into,” he said. Another board member, Professor Don Beaven, said it was up to those on medical advisory committees to encourage the Health Department to change its ruling, which he described as a slightly Edwardian idea. The same ruling meant that doctors were also not permitted to extract hormonal material from urine.