In New York, a Grisly Traffic in Body Parts

[undeterred]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012701569.html?

Illegal Sales Worry Dead's Kin, Tissue Recipients

By Michael Powell and David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 28, 2006; Page A03

NEW YORK -- Hundreds of very live Americans are walking around with pieces of the wrong dead people inside of them. A macabre scandal has spread from a body-harvesting lab in New Jersey to hospitals as far away as Florida, Nebraska and Texas as hundreds of people discover that they have received tissue and bone carved from looted corpses, not least the cadaver of Alistair Cooke, the late and erudite host of PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre."

The Brooklyn district attorney and federal Food and Drug Administration inspectors are investigating dozens of funeral homes in New York City and Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd. of Fort Lee, N.J., which is run by a former dentist who, his lawyer acknowledges, abused intravenous pain medications while with patients.

The former dentist came to funeral homes, investigators say, and extracted bone, tendons and skin from corpses without the consent of relatives. Later, Biomedical Tissue Services shipped coolers full of tissue to hospitals for surgeries. A dead body can be worth tens of thousands of dollars when it is dissected for parts.

The scandal raises questions about the safety and proper supervision of a billion-dollar-a-year industry that supplies skin and tissue for 1 million tissue transplants each year. But patients are most confounded by the skin-crawling fact that no one knows from whom the bone and tissue was harvested.

[Bucky]

1. Alistair Cooke!! (& someone has one of his master pieces?)

the joke almost writes itself

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. Is it wrong to laugh?

Such a sick practice :puke:

Such a good pun :rofl:


I'm torn :shrug:




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[joeybee12]

3. Talk about topical--Numb3rs did a show on this last night...

...not sure what I think of the show--interesting at times, likeable characters, sometimes the dialogue is horrendous, though.

[scudrunner]

4. Any connection to people who go missing?

[FlaGranny]

5. While this is illegal,

and being done for profit and is dispicable, I can't help but feel body parts should be legal and COMPLETELY FREE to tissue recipients. The tissue is needed and the dead won't miss it. I'd like to see a system where you have to opt out of tissue and organ donation, rather than opt in. I never did understood the objection to organ donation - as long as it is done respectfully and legally.

[LisaL]

9. I completely disagree.

If people want to be organ donors-great. But people should not be forced into it.

[DemExpat]

12. I agree here.

It really boggles my mind to think that we would have no say over our dead bodies or those of our loved ones. (respecting their wishes, of course)

It is wonderful to offer if you want to, unethical to my view and feelings to be forced to.

DemEx

[LisaL]

13. Exactly. Our bodies belong to us. Why should it change upon

our death? I mean, people plan how they want their funeral to go, if they want to be buried or cremated. Yet apparently some think we should have no choice if our bodies should be cut up and our tissues removed upon our death.

[juliana24]

18. I agree with you. People should not be treated like cattle.

[FlaGranny]

19. You completely disagree?

That organ donation should be done legally and be free? No one can force you to donate. I don't understand what you are disagreeing with. Opting out instead of opting in would increase donations, but it couldn't be done against your will.

I hope most people can see the point of giving a loved one's organs to save a person's life (and thus having their remains do good in the world), rather than letting them rot in the ground or go up in flames because of misguided notions about how the dead person "feels."

[bleedingheart]

6. as someone who has received donor tissue....this bothers me

because the tissue should be obtained legally and be done in an ethical manner. Otherwise people like myself won't be so lucky in the future as people are turned off to donating tissue, organs, etc.

[juliana24]

17. Read a similar story about a person whose corpse was raided for body parts

..so we have made arrangments to no longer donate my bodily organs or tissues, until these unethical issues and big money hospitals are dealt with legally.

[boobooday]

7. whaaaa?

An evil dentist who ran funeral homes?

This sounds like a pitch for a horror movie.

:scared:

[AnneD]

14. As long as they don't serve meat pies...

you're ok.

[Straight Shooter]

8. Hundreds of people amongst a million transplants each year.

Definitely unethical, but no cause for alarm or panic in the general population. I can think of worse things happening. I suspect it's confined to this dentist and his sphere of contacts.

I would like to recommend the book "Stiff" by Mary Roach. It's about the use of cadavers in medical and research laboratories. Very strange, the life of cadavers. Whatever you do, don't eat dinner while you're reading the chapter about the decomposition studies done at a lab in Tennessee, LOL.

[LisaL]

10. No cause for alarm.?They removed tissue from a guy

ridden with cancer. Pretty scary to think such things go on. I imagine any recipients of such tissues can develop a number of diseases.

[Straight Shooter]

11. I should have clarified my statement.

Thank you. I meant as a percentage of what can go wrong.

Of course, we have no guarantee under regulated circumstances to prevent a similar situation, where someone who has undiagnosed cancer might die and tissue from their body be transplanted into someone else. These are risks inherent in any transplant operation. The body is a quirky thing ...

[Lars39]

15. The Body Farm.

Not to be confused with The Farm. :)

[Straight Shooter]

16. So that is the name of the place?

LOL. Sounds like a spa. :7