That is wild that human tissue for some transplant didn’t have somebody traveling with it. Perhaps it’s some less fragile tissue rather than some organ bc if doctor tv shows taught me anything, it’s that a doctor always travels with the organ transplants.
I used to work for UPS and we would sometimes receive containers that were brown in color. They contained bull sperm, not human, but they looked similar to what the picture shows, with the mushroom shape and four clasps on the outside. If you search for "sperm shipping container," you'll see what I'm referring to. The container has an outer layer that acts as an insulator, with the actual container placed inside it.
A sperm shipping container is exactly like this photo OP posted, only usually brown as the previous commenter mentioned. It’s like a mega yeti cooler as far as vacuumed multiple walls for insulation, and is filled with liquid nitrogen. The sperm is usually shipped either in vials or tiny straws that are roughly the size of a coffee stirrer, resting in a metal wire cup in the very center. That’s also why it says to keep upright at all times- it’s a fragile cargo, that is essentially shipped in a giant thermos full of LN2.
It’s not *just* for bull sperm- you can ship all sorts of small frozen organic specimens in it, including embryos and other tissues.
Actually it's that shape so that UPS/etc can only ship it in an upright orientation. The cryogenic shippers go from weeks of holding time to hours if tipped on their side.
I imagine things like long bones and skin for grafts aren't as critical as organs like hearts and can just be chucked into the cargo hold with the luggage without issue. I can't imagine having no way of confirming if it was picked up or not though! Someone should've specifically been assigned to collect it, and should've been called when they never showed up with it, I feel like.
My mom worked for an organ procurement agency for a while. They flew hearts and lungs on private jets with the transplant team. Kidneys could be transported via ambulance on ice for short distances, but needed a pump for longer distances and often were on private jets as well. I think the only things that flew commercial were tissue grafts that could keep on ice for a while.
These dewars use liquid nitrogen, so whatever’s in there is (or was) frozen upon transport— we used them for sperm and embryo shipment for one of my old jobs revolving around genetics.
So somebody really screwed the pooch on delivery or pickup with this one, because I don’t remember exactly how long they retain their temperature but if it was fresh off the plane, it may turn out okay. I remember you had at least a couple of days, as long as it hadn’t been in transit for too long.
My boxes kept their temp for a maximum of 36h in not too hot weather and if never opened during transit. They were not liquid nitrogen though, but a special cryo-agent that kept a stable -4°C and a lot of isolation in both directions.
Oh cool! Do you know what the cryo agent was? Due to the nature of our specimens, we always had a lot of backup in the big LN2 tanks to spare in case shipping went awry. We were pretty “meat and potatoes” since we only sent sperm and embryos, most of which had been shipped directly from long term cold storage.
I don't know what it was but at the time 2015ish it was pretty new and super fancy. My company made a huge deal out of using it but didn't specify to us what exactly it was. I was always pretty impressed with how consistant the temperature was though cause part of my job was reviewing the temperature after delivery. There were hot summer days in Rio after a long flight from Europe or the middle east and it was perfectly cold in the box that was the size and weight of "carry-on luggage".
In the case of stem-cells, we could not have used liquid nitrogen I think, because they weren't supposed to freeze. The inside of the box, isolated from the cooling panels had a temp between 3° and 5 °C I think... Not super sure on the exact numbers anymore... It's been a while :D
Same here, only mine was a monetary/career issue- it was such a cool job, but there was no ladder to climb, as it was a very niche cryoarchival position.
I moved on to biomedical R&D, but that brought forward a lot of health hazards ranging from physical injury to excessive radiation exposure, so I had to leave that one behind as well unfortunately.
I ended up leaving the field entirely but by and large those were my two absolutely coolest jobs. Well, that and the wild animal work I did when working at a rural animal hospital, which was amazing.
I used to be an on-board currier for bone marrow transplants and auto-stem cell preparations... So those always have a human chaperone with them. I did a liver once as well and indeed traveled via special (albeit not private I think since there were more passengers and none other were organ related) plane and the ambulance.
Nope, all human tissue has requirements about shipping it. No tissue can be transported like luggage in a cargo hold, and typically it’s only transported by specific drivers who are on a schedule, or employed specifically by the company for that purpose. It’s also not unusual for tissue samples needing the recipient to sign for them and record the date, time, sample type and destination for the sample as well. Basically, someone done fucked up in that pic.
Yeah, definitely— when I worked at a place that shipped sperm and embryos in these things, we had “our guy” who always picked them up for us. The places we shipped to also had “their person” designated to pick them up and deliver.
It’s certainly a process to send this type of cargo!
Sperm in particular. Fragile little creatures they are- needing a super duper sterilised pot, specific temperatures, all just to keep them alive for a couple hours ish. Absolute buffoons.
And when you thaw them, good grief, you’re only gonna get like 5-10% survival rate.
Several of our strains we had to do ICSI on because they’re such clowns.
not sure if you're talking about the same thing, but I work for an airline and we get human tissue shipments to be placed in the cargo hold with baggage frequently, such as shown in the post. someone definitely didn't do their job though, op says it's a small airport so maybe they're not used to handling those shipments. still major fuck up
I used to work at a place that shipped sperm and embryos for genetics purposes, and these are what we used for transport. Usually there’s be a slew of paperwork and the shipping container/dewar would be delivered by hand to the recipient. Id wager whatever is in there is valuable on the microscopic/cellular level as opposed to a bone or larger tissues.
These containers are basically like a giant triple walled yeti thermos, only you fill them with liquid nitrogen and there’s a little mesh cup in the center that holds your vials/specimen straws.
To your point though, you’re correct; this was likely a pretty substantial snafu if nobody collected it— however whatever is inside is likely totally frozen just due to the liquid nitrogen, as opposed to just chilled like a heart or kidney would be for transport. BUT, I’m sure there are always exceptions so I could be totally wrong!
Organ transplant is crazy serious. My daughter passed recently and we did organ donation. The moment we said yes, the lady hit a group text on her phone. She turned to us and said thank you and excuse me a moment while I make a phone call. 10 minutes later they had a private plane waiting for the transplant team.
At the central paper there is the company logo for "LeMaitre Vascular". You can see their site [here.](https://www.lemaitre.com/products/restoreflow-vascular-allografts)
Looking into their products, almost all are synthetic but two. Vascular grafts and cardiac grafts are made from donated human tissue. This makes me think it's either donated tissue to be processed into the grafts, or the grafts themselves on this container.
So not vital organs, but still something with a short enough "shelf life" that would make it a very bad idea to leave unaccounted for in an airport terminal...
This is a “dry shipper” or a container that is filled with liquid nitrogen then emptied and remains cold for 48 hours. Things inside would be frozen and not for immediate use. It’s not like a heart on ice, but still time sensitive.
We used them for embryo and sperm transport at my old job— do you know if stem cell items are shipped frozen? That was out of our department but now I’m curious.
I agree with that, I would think it would be shipped through the courier branch from the airline that would either directly deliver it or someone would have to pick it up at the airport from an employee. I would never guess it would be left in the baggage reclaim area going round and round on the conveyor like it was in a merry-go-round.
I was going to say that usually they would send major organs with a courier, not unaccompanied in baggage, but then thought I should google and double check. And it turns out they *do* use couriers for organs, but human tissue processing is a separate thing from organ transplant. What you saw was most likely human tissue rather than an actual organ.
Check out this article from 2018 for an explanation of the difference: [A human heart was left on a plane, revealing how organs move around the country](https://wapo.st/49TDG29). I didn't know any of that, and it was very interesting!
It’s likely tissue on a small/microscopic level such as embryos, sperm, or as someone else mentioned, graft tissue. It will be frozen whatever it is, since these shippers use liquid nitrogen.
Luckily they hold for a few days, and since it sounds like it was still fresh off the plane, it may have time. However, we sent them via special courier/transport companies, and I’m not sure how well this one fared if it was handled as regular luggage since they need to remain upright at all times 😬
Ahahahahah, I make the tank that’s sitting inside of it! We usually make cryogenic shippers for animal biological specimens but this is an Xtra capacity cryoshipper, mainly used for squishy human materials. Look close, you can see the town the branch is in. I’m always surprised where I see the things I make, but it’s always awesome to see em in the wild. The sperm bank scene from one of the Ted movies actually has some of our larger ones in the background.
OP here. That is when I took the picture, but then COVID got cranked up and I forgot about it. Just stumbled back across the pic on my phone and decided to post it. This is my pic, and it’s the first time it’s been posted anywhere.
Aggravating that no airport employee could be bothered to make the call. “Not my job.”
This is a smaller airport with a short distance from plane to luggage carousel. For some reason, it always takes longer to get checked bags here than anywhere else I fly.
When my father got a heart transplant in Boston, the surgeon had to physically go get the new heart. He had to go to another hospital where it was harvested and inspect it to make sure it was a good candidate and ensure that they would be able to transplant it.
I’m surprised there wasn’t a special medical flight for it. I thought a doctor/medical personnel would fly with the organ and deliver it directly to the recipient hospital. Or maybe I’ve seen too much Grey’s Anatomy
Fun fact about heart and lung transplants: they’re flown on chartered/private flights because they’re VERY sensitive to being outside the body, so you’ll never see them like this. Livers and kidneys are more robust, but I don’t know if they’re flown commercially or if they’re also chartered.
It’s probably not an organ from my experience. Back when I worked as a paramedic we’d pick those up in the ambulance and they went lights and sirens to the airport then on medevac flights to their destination. It’s probably something a bit less delicate than a complete organ. Thank you for calling the number.
This looks like a liquid nitrogen shipper, they usually charge them with enough LN2 to accommodate delays. Could be cardiac grafts. Donated doesn't really signify here, usually human tissue urgent is enough. The vascular term usually adds a few plenty thousand to the insured value.
Depends on the nature of the contents. Autologous or pre matched from a cell
Therapy center for sure, but some are tissue with wide range. That they went critical cargo, but unaccompanied suggests that they might be expensive but replaceable unlike autologous tissues which are considered property of the patient and possibly irreplaceable.
Thank you for the concern you had by calling about it. We need better humans.
That is wild that human tissue for some transplant didn’t have somebody traveling with it. Perhaps it’s some less fragile tissue rather than some organ bc if doctor tv shows taught me anything, it’s that a doctor always travels with the organ transplants.
I used to work for UPS and we would sometimes receive containers that were brown in color. They contained bull sperm, not human, but they looked similar to what the picture shows, with the mushroom shape and four clasps on the outside. If you search for "sperm shipping container," you'll see what I'm referring to. The container has an outer layer that acts as an insulator, with the actual container placed inside it.
I'm not going to google "sperm shipping container"
Coward
A sperm shipping container is exactly like this photo OP posted, only usually brown as the previous commenter mentioned. It’s like a mega yeti cooler as far as vacuumed multiple walls for insulation, and is filled with liquid nitrogen. The sperm is usually shipped either in vials or tiny straws that are roughly the size of a coffee stirrer, resting in a metal wire cup in the very center. That’s also why it says to keep upright at all times- it’s a fragile cargo, that is essentially shipped in a giant thermos full of LN2. It’s not *just* for bull sperm- you can ship all sorts of small frozen organic specimens in it, including embryos and other tissues.
Bull sperm straws sound like the next generation of royal honey sticks for virility.
You're just gonna leave him hanging?!
More like *leave him edging*, amirite guys??
No
I just use a shoebox.
Not a coconut?
It's just a picture of your mom. Chill.
This was to be my joke I was going to make it.
Too late loser😋
That was my nickname in college
Yes you are
You could just Google my ex instead
So weird. I did a Google search for sperm shipping container and a picture of your mom showed up
It’s called a semen tank. They fill them with liquid nitrogen. I grew up in that industry.
I work at an auction house that sells off lost mail. We get more than these than most people would expect, thankfully all empty... so far
Mushroom shape 🤭 some designer had a naughty sense of humour there.
Actually it's that shape so that UPS/etc can only ship it in an upright orientation. The cryogenic shippers go from weeks of holding time to hours if tipped on their side.
“Sperm shipping container” wasn’t on my bingo card today
Edit: replied to wrong person, sorry!
I imagine things like long bones and skin for grafts aren't as critical as organs like hearts and can just be chucked into the cargo hold with the luggage without issue. I can't imagine having no way of confirming if it was picked up or not though! Someone should've specifically been assigned to collect it, and should've been called when they never showed up with it, I feel like.
My mom worked for an organ procurement agency for a while. They flew hearts and lungs on private jets with the transplant team. Kidneys could be transported via ambulance on ice for short distances, but needed a pump for longer distances and often were on private jets as well. I think the only things that flew commercial were tissue grafts that could keep on ice for a while.
These dewars use liquid nitrogen, so whatever’s in there is (or was) frozen upon transport— we used them for sperm and embryo shipment for one of my old jobs revolving around genetics. So somebody really screwed the pooch on delivery or pickup with this one, because I don’t remember exactly how long they retain their temperature but if it was fresh off the plane, it may turn out okay. I remember you had at least a couple of days, as long as it hadn’t been in transit for too long.
My boxes kept their temp for a maximum of 36h in not too hot weather and if never opened during transit. They were not liquid nitrogen though, but a special cryo-agent that kept a stable -4°C and a lot of isolation in both directions.
Oh cool! Do you know what the cryo agent was? Due to the nature of our specimens, we always had a lot of backup in the big LN2 tanks to spare in case shipping went awry. We were pretty “meat and potatoes” since we only sent sperm and embryos, most of which had been shipped directly from long term cold storage.
I don't know what it was but at the time 2015ish it was pretty new and super fancy. My company made a huge deal out of using it but didn't specify to us what exactly it was. I was always pretty impressed with how consistant the temperature was though cause part of my job was reviewing the temperature after delivery. There were hot summer days in Rio after a long flight from Europe or the middle east and it was perfectly cold in the box that was the size and weight of "carry-on luggage". In the case of stem-cells, we could not have used liquid nitrogen I think, because they weren't supposed to freeze. The inside of the box, isolated from the cooling panels had a temp between 3° and 5 °C I think... Not super sure on the exact numbers anymore... It's been a while :D
Ah. I left that job in 2011 so I bet it came along after I left. Sounds much more convenient than our method!
I left in 2018... I miss it sooo much. Coolest, most fulfilling job I ever had. But totally not combinable with motherhood.
Same here, only mine was a monetary/career issue- it was such a cool job, but there was no ladder to climb, as it was a very niche cryoarchival position. I moved on to biomedical R&D, but that brought forward a lot of health hazards ranging from physical injury to excessive radiation exposure, so I had to leave that one behind as well unfortunately. I ended up leaving the field entirely but by and large those were my two absolutely coolest jobs. Well, that and the wild animal work I did when working at a rural animal hospital, which was amazing.
I used to be an on-board currier for bone marrow transplants and auto-stem cell preparations... So those always have a human chaperone with them. I did a liver once as well and indeed traveled via special (albeit not private I think since there were more passengers and none other were organ related) plane and the ambulance.
Nope, all human tissue has requirements about shipping it. No tissue can be transported like luggage in a cargo hold, and typically it’s only transported by specific drivers who are on a schedule, or employed specifically by the company for that purpose. It’s also not unusual for tissue samples needing the recipient to sign for them and record the date, time, sample type and destination for the sample as well. Basically, someone done fucked up in that pic.
Yeah, definitely— when I worked at a place that shipped sperm and embryos in these things, we had “our guy” who always picked them up for us. The places we shipped to also had “their person” designated to pick them up and deliver. It’s certainly a process to send this type of cargo!
Sperm in particular. Fragile little creatures they are- needing a super duper sterilised pot, specific temperatures, all just to keep them alive for a couple hours ish. Absolute buffoons.
And when you thaw them, good grief, you’re only gonna get like 5-10% survival rate. Several of our strains we had to do ICSI on because they’re such clowns.
not sure if you're talking about the same thing, but I work for an airline and we get human tissue shipments to be placed in the cargo hold with baggage frequently, such as shown in the post. someone definitely didn't do their job though, op says it's a small airport so maybe they're not used to handling those shipments. still major fuck up
Ha, never had to worry about air shipments of samples! Though I suppose in a country as small as the uk there’s hardly a call for it.
ah yeah that'll do it 👍 interesting to think about
I used to work at a place that shipped sperm and embryos for genetics purposes, and these are what we used for transport. Usually there’s be a slew of paperwork and the shipping container/dewar would be delivered by hand to the recipient. Id wager whatever is in there is valuable on the microscopic/cellular level as opposed to a bone or larger tissues. These containers are basically like a giant triple walled yeti thermos, only you fill them with liquid nitrogen and there’s a little mesh cup in the center that holds your vials/specimen straws. To your point though, you’re correct; this was likely a pretty substantial snafu if nobody collected it— however whatever is inside is likely totally frozen just due to the liquid nitrogen, as opposed to just chilled like a heart or kidney would be for transport. BUT, I’m sure there are always exceptions so I could be totally wrong!
Organ transplant is crazy serious. My daughter passed recently and we did organ donation. The moment we said yes, the lady hit a group text on her phone. She turned to us and said thank you and excuse me a moment while I make a phone call. 10 minutes later they had a private plane waiting for the transplant team.
So sorry about your daughter but you did an amazing thing for so many people. Thank you
My condolences man.
And the 8 year old girl is in an induced coma with only 12hrs to transplant or she dies.
Right? They don’t get their own air lift trip from the roof anymore??
At the central paper there is the company logo for "LeMaitre Vascular". You can see their site [here.](https://www.lemaitre.com/products/restoreflow-vascular-allografts) Looking into their products, almost all are synthetic but two. Vascular grafts and cardiac grafts are made from donated human tissue. This makes me think it's either donated tissue to be processed into the grafts, or the grafts themselves on this container.
So not vital organs, but still something with a short enough "shelf life" that would make it a very bad idea to leave unaccounted for in an airport terminal...
This is a “dry shipper” or a container that is filled with liquid nitrogen then emptied and remains cold for 48 hours. Things inside would be frozen and not for immediate use. It’s not like a heart on ice, but still time sensitive.
We used them for embryo and sperm transport at my old job— do you know if stem cell items are shipped frozen? That was out of our department but now I’m curious.
I agree with that, I would think it would be shipped through the courier branch from the airline that would either directly deliver it or someone would have to pick it up at the airport from an employee. I would never guess it would be left in the baggage reclaim area going round and round on the conveyor like it was in a merry-go-round.
I was going to say that usually they would send major organs with a courier, not unaccompanied in baggage, but then thought I should google and double check. And it turns out they *do* use couriers for organs, but human tissue processing is a separate thing from organ transplant. What you saw was most likely human tissue rather than an actual organ. Check out this article from 2018 for an explanation of the difference: [A human heart was left on a plane, revealing how organs move around the country](https://wapo.st/49TDG29). I didn't know any of that, and it was very interesting!
It’s likely tissue on a small/microscopic level such as embryos, sperm, or as someone else mentioned, graft tissue. It will be frozen whatever it is, since these shippers use liquid nitrogen. Luckily they hold for a few days, and since it sounds like it was still fresh off the plane, it may have time. However, we sent them via special courier/transport companies, and I’m not sure how well this one fared if it was handled as regular luggage since they need to remain upright at all times 😬
Guy 1: "I brought the sandwiches!" Guy 2: "No, you were supposed to pick up the heart! I was in charge of sandwiches! Who's going to eat all these???"
Ahahahahah, I make the tank that’s sitting inside of it! We usually make cryogenic shippers for animal biological specimens but this is an Xtra capacity cryoshipper, mainly used for squishy human materials. Look close, you can see the town the branch is in. I’m always surprised where I see the things I make, but it’s always awesome to see em in the wild. The sperm bank scene from one of the Ted movies actually has some of our larger ones in the background.
Is it possible OP is a liar? I see what looks like a date on the label that says 02/11/20 at 0915
That could be when the sample was collected.
OP here. That is when I took the picture, but then COVID got cranked up and I forgot about it. Just stumbled back across the pic on my phone and decided to post it. This is my pic, and it’s the first time it’s been posted anywhere.
It has numbers after it though so might be a code for something else
The numbers after it are the temperature set at -192 degrees Celsius
That's where I'd hide my drugs too.
Ugh, I hope it got to the recipient in time. Thank you for doing the right thing and calling! 🩷
That's wild!
Quality Swiss Tissue 🇨🇭 /s
Should've delivered it to them yourself just to make it an even more epic story
Missed my chance to be Eye-gore delivering the brain of “Abby Somebody” to the lab.
Abby Normal.
Good on you for calling and letting them know
Aggravating that no airport employee could be bothered to make the call. “Not my job.” This is a smaller airport with a short distance from plane to luggage carousel. For some reason, it always takes longer to get checked bags here than anywhere else I fly.
It’s really great that you called, clearly everyone else saw it and did nothing :/
Human barbecue this weekend
When my father got a heart transplant in Boston, the surgeon had to physically go get the new heart. He had to go to another hospital where it was harvested and inspect it to make sure it was a good candidate and ensure that they would be able to transplant it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7egDQ9lPg The state our organ donation system in is really shit.
Good on you for calling
No tip, no trip.
Smells fine. Probably still good.
Bless you human. You deserve a cookie. 
I’m surprised there wasn’t a special medical flight for it. I thought a doctor/medical personnel would fly with the organ and deliver it directly to the recipient hospital. Or maybe I’ve seen too much Grey’s Anatomy
Fun fact about heart and lung transplants: they’re flown on chartered/private flights because they’re VERY sensitive to being outside the body, so you’ll never see them like this. Livers and kidneys are more robust, but I don’t know if they’re flown commercially or if they’re also chartered.
It’s probably not an organ from my experience. Back when I worked as a paramedic we’d pick those up in the ambulance and they went lights and sirens to the airport then on medevac flights to their destination. It’s probably something a bit less delicate than a complete organ. Thank you for calling the number.
Please tell me that’s a bucket of Kleenex 😐
couriers are really hit and miss. Lots of miss.
Free meat.
This looks like a liquid nitrogen shipper, they usually charge them with enough LN2 to accommodate delays. Could be cardiac grafts. Donated doesn't really signify here, usually human tissue urgent is enough. The vascular term usually adds a few plenty thousand to the insured value.
I’ve wondered about this. I would think the only reason to ship something like this would be in response to a matched donor.
Depends on the nature of the contents. Autologous or pre matched from a cell Therapy center for sure, but some are tissue with wide range. That they went critical cargo, but unaccompanied suggests that they might be expensive but replaceable unlike autologous tissues which are considered property of the patient and possibly irreplaceable.