Under the law, deceased individuals are not considered to be human subjects and do not require consent for research; however, GTEx management decided to require authorization due to the large amount of sequencing data to be produced and made publically available. With respect to consent, the BSSs sometimes had different approaches as to the specific manner in which authorization was obtained, but project staff worked closely with the BSSs to ensure that the basic requirements and essential consent elements (Table 1) for the GTEx project were met.
