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| In article <memo.20051223221557.588J@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk>,
alan@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk (Alan) wrote:
> In article <memo.20051223113246.1008A@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk>,
> alan@veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk (Alan) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> FDA Provides Information on Investigation into Human Tissue for
> Transplantation
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> P05-77
> October 26, 2005
> http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2005/NEW01249.html
>
> --
>
> Body snatchers tied to allograft firms?
> Alleged New York-area ring investigated for selling parts to corpse tissue
> harvesters.
> October 7, 2005: 2:54 PM EDT
> By Aaron Smith, CNN/Money staff writer
> http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/07/new...on=money_latest
>
> --
>
> Class-Action Claims Tainted Body Tissue Could Give Patients AIDS
> December 1, 2005
> http://www.courthousenews.com/Jump.Dec.1.htm
>
> EDISON, N.J. (CN) – Medtronic Sofamor Danek and its subsidiary, Spinal
> Graft Technologies, are lead defendants in a racketeering class-action
> claim in Somerset County Court that accuses them of putting people at risk
> of AIDS, hepatitis and other diseases by negligently harvesting,
> processing and selling human tissue and body parts. Plaintiffs,
> represented by Lombardi & Lombardi, claim the multiple defendants did not
> properly screen the material collected for allografts – human implants –
> and that the USFDA in October issued a recall of human tissue transplant
> material manufactured of distributed by defendant Biomedical Tissue
> Services. Also in October, the Centers for Disease Control recommended
> that all physicians who implanted tissue provided by defendants Medtronic,
> RTI, Tutogen, LifeCell, LMTB and BTCCT recommend that the patients be
> tested for HIV, hepatitis B and C and syphilis, the suit states.
> Plaintiffs seek punitive damage, disgorgement, and a fund for the putative
> victims.
>
> The defendants are Medrontic Sofamor Danek; Spinal Graft Technologies,
> L.L.C., a subsidiary of Medrontic Sofamor Danek; Regeneration
> Technologies, Inc.; Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd.; Tutogen Medical,
> Inc.; Lifecell Corp.; Lost Mountain Tissue Bank; Blood and Tissue Center
> of Central Texas; Michael Mastromarino, D.M.D.; Joseph Nicelli; and Daniel
> George & Son Funeral Home.
>
> --
>
> CNN Sunday
> December 18, 2005
> http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRI.../18/sun.02.html
> (About half way down, using Find: Feyerick)
WILLIS: Each week at this time we bring you some of outstanding reporting by CNN
over the past seven days. Tonight, CNN's Deb Feyerick has the disturbing tale of
a ghoulish chop shop involving human bodies cut up for profit.
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael Bruno was good old New
York City cab driver with an opinion about everything, even his own death. After
losing a battle with cancer two years ago, his son Vito honored his last wishes.
VITO BRUNO, ALLEGED VICTIM'S SON: My father had requested to be cremated.
FEYERICK: And today in this box, lie Michael Bruno's remains. At least that's
what Vito used to think. Now, he's not so sure.
BRUNO: This was the remains of Michael Bruno.
FEYERICK: And now what do you think?
BRUNO: I don't know what's in here at all.
FEYERICK: That's because Michael Bruno may have unwillingly become the victim of
the scandal that's making ghoulish headlines. It's sending shock waves through a
billion dollar industry that until now has remained out of the spotlight, the
business of human body parts.
It's an industry that relies on the goodwill of donors who believe they're
helping medical research or saving lives and business is booming. Heads, torsos,
limbs, you name it, command hefty prices.
By one estimate a single body chopped into pieces can be worth up to $150,000.
The donor never sees a penny, but it seems everyone else does, including the
funeral home which can charge $1,000 per body for storage and transportation.
TODD R. OLSON, ALBERT EINSTEIN college OF MEDICINE: We're dealing simply with an
open market, where the supply and the demand is the only limiting factor on how
much people are going to be able to profit.
FEYERICK: New York City investigators believe Michael Bruno is one of hundreds,
if not more, whose body parts were taken without permission and passed off as
legitimate donations, to companies which make money processing the bodies and
providing them to the medical community.
Now the Brooklyn district attorney is leading a massive investigation which
could implicate as many as six New York City funeral homes and a company that
procures organs for hospitals and research. At the center of the case, two men,
Dr. Michael Mastromarino of Biomedical Tissue Services in New Jersey and his
partner, embalmer Joseph Misselli (ph).
Both are under investigation for allegedly carving up bodies without consent and
selling them for profit. The alleged body snatching was discovered here by the
new owners of this Brooklyn funeral home. One of them told investigators she was
shocked to touch a corpse's leg and discover plumbing pipe instead of bone. The
funeral home is now closed and its sign torn down.
BRUNO: It's just beyond anything anybody could ever comprehend. It's just the
sickest, sickest story you could hear.
FEYERICK: Vito Bruno says he learned of the alleged theft when a New York city
detective showed up at his door with a donation consent form Bruno had
supposedly signed.
BRUNO: It was not my signature. Somebody had forged my name.
FEYERICK: Also changed according to Bruno, was his father's cause of death,
listed at heart disease instead of kidney cancer.
BRUNO: I was angry and really concerned, concerned that these body parts went
into other people. People got diseased body parts.
FEYERICK: How many other victim was there and how long had body parts theft gone
undetected? In Denver, Colorado, some 1800 miles away, an apparent whistle
blower. How many people could receive tissue from a single donor?
DR. MICHAEL BAUER, BONFILS BLOOD CENTER: We have had a recent case where we've
traced it back and there were over 90 different patients who were benefiting by
one donation. That's exactly right.
FEYERICK: Michael Bauer tests donated tissue for disease. He says he discovered
phone numbers on donor records sent by Mastromarino's company were bogus. BAUER:
I still hoped that there would be a logical explanation for it. What was going
through my mind was, Dr. Mastromarino had not received permission to recover
these tissues.
FEYERICK: It was then Bauer says that he called the New Jersey doctor.
BAUER: His answer it me was, I wasn't calling the families. The funeral homes
were.
MARIO GALLUCCI, MICHAEL MASTROMARINO'S ATTORNEY: Nobody's shown us that
absolutely anything has been done inappropriately. These allegations, nobody's
been charged with any crime.
FEYERICK: Mario Gallucci is the attorney for Dr. Mastromarino. What is being
alleged is serious, that is, signatures were forged, medical records were
doctored. Can you see not as it relates to your client, how this would be
shocking to many people?
GALLUCCI: Without a doubt. I would be very upset to find out that my loved one,
who I didn't consent to had tissue taken from them without my consent. Of course
I'd be upset.
FEYERICK: But your client had nothing to do with it?
GALLUCCI: Nothing at all.
FEYERICK: That's little comfort to people like Rolando Estrada, a Texas man
living with the knowledge that he might have stolen tissue in his knee.
ROLANDO ESTRADA, STOLEN TISSUE RECIPIENT: I guess it would be like almost like
you get your car fixed, and they used stolen parts on it, I guess. I don't know,
it's kind of weird. It's hard to think about it.
FEYERICK: Earlier this year, Estrada underwent surgery to replace torn ligament,
but after the FDA recalled all tissue from Mastromarino's company, Estrada spent
a nervous week waiting to see if his new ligament was infected with HIV,
hepatitis or syphilis.
ESTRADA: That's when it really sank in that I could have been exposed to
something life-threatening, and that's kind of when I started getting really
worried.
FEYERICK: Estrada's tests came back negative, but his case is just one of many.
For more than a year, tissue from Mastromarino's company was distributed to
doctors and hospitals throughout the U.S. and Canada. So far, there have been no
reports of illnesses stemming from those tissues. Sandford Rubenstein is Brono's
attorney in a lawsuit against the New Jersey doctor, his partner, and the
funeral home which handled his father's cremation.
SANFORD RUBENSTEIN, VITO BRUNO'S ATTORNEY: This is a double outrage. It's an
outrage not just to the families who without consent saw their loved ones who
were deceased, their body parts used in others, but it's an outrage to those
people who received tissues.
DR. TODD R. OLSON, ALBERT EINSTEIN college OF MEDICINE: I wish I to could till
you I was shocked, but I'm not.
FEYERICK: Dr. Todd Olson teaches anatomy at the Albert Einstein college of
Medicine. In recent years has watched the corpse trade explode.
OLSON: It's the ideal, you know, capitalistic commodity here. You get for
nothing, and all you are doing is charging for processing packing and shipping,
storing, and disposing of it.
FEYERICK: Federal law proiblts's sale of any human body parts, but allows for
go-betweens reimbursed for reasonable expenses. The problem is there are no
limits as to what's considered reasonable and no paper trail to track the
movement and there's little regulation or oversight.
OLSON: There are more laws that regulate shipping a he have had lettuce into the
state of California than there would be to ship a human head. I think the
general public would be outraged if they knew the amount of money involved in
this.
MARIO GALLUCCI, MICHAEL MASTROMARINO'S ATTORNEY: You get a fee for procuring the
blood sample, you get a fee for storing the tissue. And then you get a fee for
shipping the tissue and that's it. That's the only money to be -- the only money
transpired with the doctor is that.
FEYERICK (on camera): Can you get rich doing what the doctor is doing?
GALLUCCI: Rich, no I don't think you can get rich.
Reporter: People are calling your client, Dr. Frankenstein, a ghoul, a grave
robber. What's your response?
GALLUCCI: He's a pioneer in the industry. He's making mankind better.
FEYERICK (voice-over): In New York, investigators have begun the grisly task of
digging up bodies from cemeteries like this one to see for themselves if bones,
limbs and other body parts of missing. The funeral home which handled Michael
Bruno's body denied any ties to the body snatching ring. Embalmer, Joseph
Neselly (ph) and his attorney both denied a request for an interview. Vito
Brono, meanwile, is left with anger and doubt.
(on camera): To think you'd actually make a business by illegally selling,
illegally taking body parts.
BRUNO: Sounds like a bad movie. Doesn't it?
FEYERICK (voice-over): But it's not, it's a real-life bone snatching scam, which
if proven, could expose the dark side of the death business. Deborah Feyerick,
CNN, New York.
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
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