Unknown to mothers, placentas collected for drugs

Each year, more than one million American women give a part of their bodies to make valuable vaccines used throughout the world.

In return, they don't even get a thank you.

But these women - all of whom have just given birth - might be surprised to learn that their "gifts" are part of a multimillion-dollar business involving hospitals, brokers and an international conglomerate based near Paris.

The business: buying and selling placentas, the vital mass of tissues that nourishes the fetus during pregnancy.

The maternal blood contained in placentas provides a valuable source of plasma proteins used to make vaccines for rabies, as well as other medicines.

For one French company, Institut Merieux in Lyon, placentas are an important source of income. The firm buys 15 tons of placentas a day - five million placentas a year - and processes them into products sold in about 100 countries, including the United States.

In 1987, the most recent year for which data were available, Merieux reported profits of $35 million on sales of more than a half-billion dollars.

That year, more than 1.7 million pounds of frozen placentas - 776 metric tons - were shipped from U. S. ports overseas, shipping records show. Most

went to Merieux.

A placenta weighs about one pound.

Merieux is by far the largest commercial company in the world that uses placental blood plasma to make medicines. Its supplies come from hospitals in 30 countries, including Canada, Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Sometimes Merieux pays hospitals for their placentas and other times it negotiates a fee with agents operating on its behalf, according to documents and interviews.

One such agent is R. P. International, a privately held company in North Wales, Montgomery County. Shipping records show that in 1987 this firm sent nearly 401,000 pounds of frozen placentas to Le Havre, France, for Merieux's facility in Lyon.

Roland Roth, the head of R. P. International, declined to be interviewed. However, Henry Portner, an attorney representing the company, described its operations this way:

"We are in essence the middle person between the hospital and the manufacturer. We place freezer units at the hospitals and nurses at the hospitals are given special instructions on how to take the placenta from the mother and to place it in special bags in the freezer. At some point, we come . . . into the operating room and acquire the placentas. "

Portner would not say how much Roth's firm pays hospitals for the placentas. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I know we're paid by Institut Merieux. I'm assuming there is probably some payment," he said.

Jacques Francois Martin, Merieux's general manager, said it was impossible to say what the company pays on average for placentas because the fee varies according to location and transportation costs.

Dr. Arthur J. Shulthise, president of Bio-Med HU Inc., a Louisville, Ky., company that also gathers placentas, said he pays hospitals "on the basis of quantities and weights. We pay for the electricity and the space. It's basically a remuneration for these things. "

He declined to say how many placentas he purchases from hospitals. However, records show his firm shipped more than 703,000 pounds of frozen placentas overseas in 1987.

Shulthise said the placentas would probably be destroyed, at a cost to the hospital, if they weren't sold to Merieux. By using them to make medicines, Merieux is providing a valuable service, he said.

"It's still part of the human body. It still has benefits and that's what we're interested in," Shulthise said.

Of course, Merieux makes a profit in the process. The company's 1987 annual report notes that the firm sells vaccines, albumin and other products in nearly 100 countries. About 50 percent of the company is owned by the French conglomerate Rhone-Poulenc S. A.

Merieux occupies a unique niche in the worldwide market for plasma medicines. Under French law, only the government's nationalized transfusion service can collect blood and plasma from human donors. However, a loophole in the law allows Merieux to collect and make medicines from placentas, nearly all of which are sold outside France.

Merieux operates a state-of-the-art facility in Lyon where the frozen placentas are minced into small balls, more or less like a wine press, thawed and then processed. Proteins from the maternal blood are separated, purified and made into albumin and vaccines.

Where do the U. S. placentas come from? Few hospitals will say.

The Inquirer contacted four of the largest hospital maternity services in the region to ask what they did with placentas. None of the four presently sell placentas, according to spokesmen. One of them, Abington Memorial Hospital, used to sell its placentas to Roth's company but stopped.

Donna Greenberg Root said the hospital stopped selling them in 1987. "We stopped because of the AIDS situation. We would have to make sure the placenta was not infected. There was also a question of confidentiality. The whole thing got to be such a nightmare."