Cal. Health & Safety Code § 1635 — Definitions, Licensure, and Exceptions

(a) “Department” means the State Department of Public Health.

(b) “Donor” means an individual, living or deceased, from whom tissue is removed.

(c) “Gamete bank” means a tissue bank that collects, processes, stores, or distributes sperm, oocytes, or embryos, including a facility that provides professional reproductive services, other than those facilities exempt from tissue bank licensure.

(d) “Person” means an individual, corporation, business trust, estate trust, partnership, association, state or local government, or subdivision or agency thereof, or any other legal entity.

(e) (1) “Tissue” means a human cell, group of cells, including the cornea, sclera, or vitreous humor and other segments of, or the whole eye, bones, skin, arteries, sperm, oocytes, embryos, blood, other fluids, and any other portion of a human body, but shall not include an organ when recovered for transplantation or research purposes.

(2) For purposes of paragraph (1), “organ” means a human kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas, intestine (including the esophagus, stomach, small or large intestine, or any portion of the gastrointestinal tract), or vascularized composite allograft, and associated blood vessels recovered from an organ donor during the recovery of the organ.

(f) “Tissue bank” means a place, establishment, or institution that collects, processes, stores, or distributes tissue for transplantation into human beings.

(g) “Transplantation” means the act or process of transferring tissue, including by ingestion, from a donor to the body of the donor or another human being.