PORTLAND (AP) – The state Attorney General’s Office is putting the final touches on a policy to govern organ and tissue donations at the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta.

The new policy, which is expected to spell out rules to establish consent for such donations, follows complaints from several family members that brains of their loved ones were harvested at the medical examiner’s office without permission.

The policy will be applied until more comprehensive rules governing all organ and tissue donation statewide can be put in place, said Chuck Dow, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office.

The brain harvesting issue came to the fore amid reports that Maine’s one-time funeral inspector was paid more than $150,000 over several years to collect brains for a research lab in Maryland.

The Stanley Medical Research Institute recently agreed to pay $47,500 to settle a lawsuit in which a Gorham couple alleged that their late son’s brain was taken without anyone’s consent.

The Attorney General’s Office is looking to the Maine Bureau of Health to help formulate comprehensive rules for all organ and tissue donations in Maine.

The New England Organ Bank and the New England Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank arrange for organ and tissue donations at Maine hospitals. The Medical Examiner’s Office, which takes custody of bodies in about 1,200 deaths annually, is rarely involved in hospital-based donations.

Dr. Lani Graham, the Bureau of Health’s acting director, expressed some doubt about her agency’s ability to impose broad regulations on the organizations that collect organs and tissue for transplants and research.

Graham said her agency has narrow rule-making authority, except in the area of training people who seek consent from next of kin.

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