Florida Statute 873.01
“Purchase or sale of human organs and tissue prohibited”
What it means
No person may knowingly offer to purchase or sell, or purchase, sell, or otherwise transfer, any human organ or tissue for valuable consideration. The statute names its targets: eye, cornea, kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, bone, and skin, with authority for the Agency for Health Care Administration to add more by rule. Violation is a felony of the second degree.
The exclusion is where the lawful industry lives: “valuable consideration” does not include the reasonable costs of removal, storage, and transportation. Recovering costs is legal; profiting from the part itself is not. A separate subsection bars for-profit corporations and their employees from transferring human body parts for valuable consideration — Florida's answer to the body-broker business model.
- Offering to buy or sell, buying, selling, or transferring human organs or tissue for valuable consideration: second-degree felony.
- Enumerated parts include bone and skin — the statute is not limited to transplant organs.
- “Valuable consideration” excludes the reasonable costs of removal, storage, and transportation — the basis lawful tissue banking operates on.
- For-profit corporations and their employees are separately barred from transferring body parts for valuable consideration.
- The Agency for Health Care Administration may designate additional organs and tissues by rule.
How it plays out
Families meet this statute when a body-donation brochure arrives in hospice, promising a free cremation in exchange for “tissue donation.” Some programs are legitimate nonprofits operating inside the cost exclusion; some are not. The questions we suggest asking are the statute's own: who is being paid, for what, and is the recipient a for-profit? A donation program that cannot answer in terms of recovered costs is describing a transaction §873.01 makes a felony. Putting donation wishes in signed documents keeps the decision — and the vetting — with the person it belongs to.
Where this shows up
Pages on this site where § 873.01 does real work: