When Corpses Become Mere Commodities

[Guest guest]

We have to take back our country before it's completely destroyed. Over the

last several years we've lost many of our career public servants/scientists

because they refused to be intimidated or corrupted into not protecting us

the public. Or saw their agencies defunded so they couldn't carry out their

obligation to protect the public from well connected corrupt businesses that

care only about the bottom line.

Every one of our agencies is being quickly dismantled or corrupted. The

brave whistleblowers who dare to speak out against what's happening within

the FDA, EPA, NIH, USDA, DEPT OF JUSTICE, etc., can't even rely on the

office that is suppose to protect them because employees in that agency are

requesting protection because it's even been corrupted.

Cheryl

When Corpses Become Mere Commodities

BY ROBERT COHEN

c.2006 Newhouse News Service

\

The gruesome disclosure of funeral homes secretly carving up corpses and

selling the skin, tendons and bones to a New Jersey middleman for

distribution to human tissue processors has focused renewed attention on the

trade in human body parts.

Medical experts say the ghoulish scandal, now under criminal investigation,

is the latest example of a growing and profitable nationwide business in

body parts, and sheds light on the gaps in government regulation and the

unethical treatment of the dead.

" Bodies and tissues are now becoming commodities, not for the common good

but for the money that is generated, " said Ronn Wade, director of land's

Anatomy Board.

While there are no official figures on revenue, the body-parts industry

includes more than 100 tissue banks. Eight of the biggest banks, which

procure body parts from donor families and sell the tissue for medical

products, generate about $500 million a year in revenue, public records

show.

Todd Olson, a professor of anatomy at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in

New York, said unscrupulous brokers, in violation of the law, are profiting

from the sale of body parts that are in high demand and short supply. He

said the participants include companies that collect and sell body parts and

human tissues for medical training, for commercial research and for surgical

products.

" There are people acquiring, transporting and in some cases dismembering

bodies who are functioning in a world without appropriate regulation or

oversight, " said Olson.

" A lot of people are willing to spend a lot of money without asking

questions to obtain these body parts and tissues, " he said. " And there is an

immense amount of money to be made by people who are able to acquire and

process human anatomical materials. "

The macabre case in the New York metropolitan region involves allegations

that hundreds of bodies were dismembered at funeral homes in New York, New

Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and the parts sold for profit to a

Fort Lee, N.J., tissue bank without the knowledge or consent of the

families.

Among the dead was famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke, the host of

PBS' " Masterpiece Theatre. "

Law enforcement authorities in Brooklyn, N.Y., say they are looking at the

funeral homes and at BioMedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee that resold the

human bones, skins and tendons to LifeCell Corp. in Branchburg, N.J., and to

four other tissue processors located in Georgia, Texas and Florida.

These tissue banks later distributed the materials to hospitals and

surgeons. LifeCell subsequently discovered irregularities and notified

authorities.

The Food and Drug Administration, which is conducting its own inquiry, said

that because of the potential lack of proper screening of the tissue donors,

some recipients of the tissues may be at " increased risk of infections. "

While shocking, the recent case does not stand alone. Other examples

involving the trafficking in body parts include:

-- The arrest in 2004 of the director of UCLA's cadaver donation program and

another individual on charges they supplied stolen body parts to a middleman

who sold them for profit to major private research companies.

-- The disclosure by Tulane University in the past year that it sold seven

cadavers to a distributor who resold them for a sizable profit to the Army

for use in land mine testing. The university expected the cadavers would go

to medical schools for research.

-- The guilty plea in 2003 of California crematory owner for embezzlement

and mutilating grave remains after prosecutors charged he removed heads,

knees, spines and other parts of 133 bodies without family knowledge and

sold them to research companies for more than $400,000.

-- The firing of the director of the cadaver program at the University of

Texas in Galveston after authorities alleged he sold fingernails and

toenails to a pharmaceutical company for $4,000, and might have sold other

body parts.

-- A pending criminal probe in Maine to determine whether human brains from

the state medical examiner's office were improperly sold without family

consent to a nonprofit research institute in land. Numerous lawsuits

also are pending.

Federal law allows the donation but prohibits the sale of human organs and

tissues for transplantation.

There is no prohibition on buying and selling body parts for medical and

scientific research, and no federal regulation of brokers of body parts for

research.

The law allows organizations and entrepreneurs to charge " reasonable "

acquisition and handling fees for processing, storing and transporting of

body parts.

Critics say this fee system is subject to wide interpretation of what is

reasonable and leads to exploitation by those who seek to engage in

profit-taking in an industry that takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a

year.

There are several ways to donate cadavers or body parts for science and

medicine.

About 10,000 bodies a year are donated to medical schools for teaching and

research with no direct federal oversight.

Individuals also can donate organs for transplant purposes, a practice

highly regulated by the federal government. In 2004, there were 27,000 organ

transplants in the United States, with 20,000 livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs

and other organs coming from deceased donors.

Tissue donation for transplant is another widespread practice that must meet

federal rules regarding the handling, testing and preparation of the

material. Every year, about 1 million tissue transplants are done with

tissue supplied by some 25,000 donors -- bones for fracture repair, skin to

heal wounds, tendons and ligaments to repair sports injuries.

The tissue bank controls have in the past year been upgraded by the FDA, but

the system broke down in the recent New York-New Jersey case.

P. Rigney, chief executive officer of the American Association of

Tissue Banks, said the major tissue banks are accredited by his organization

to insure they meet high standards regarding family consent, screening and

safety, and also are regulated and inspected by the FDA.

He said there may be " entities out there we may not know that are in

business, " but added he knows of no other instance involving human tissues

for transplantation that in any way mirrors what happened in the New

York-New Jersey case.

" If the allegations are true, it is unconscionable, " he said. " What is

alleged in this case is forgery and falsification of records. We are

actively examining this scenario to see if there is anything we need to do

to tighten up our standards. "

Bob Biggins, president of the National Funeral Directors Association, called

the recent disclosure " heartbreaking " but " isolated. " While state

regulations vary for funeral homes and crematories, Biggins said " there is

no state that I know of that allows a licensee to procure tissue for sale

from a third party without prior consent from the family. "

Biggins said states have laws and the industry has strict codes of conduct,

but acknowledged there will always be people who will " skirt the regulations

to do something immoral and unethical. "

Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for

Bioethics, said there is a lack of oversight regarding who is collecting

human tissues and body parts for scientific or medical research, and

increased financial incentives for shady individuals and businesses to

thrive.

While the problem may only be " fringe players, " said Caplan, " there is

enough smoke coming out that you start to wonder if there is some kind of

fire here. "

Jan. 4, 2006