A Modern Day Nightmare: Trafficking Body Parts
"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."
Read the full Washington Post article here.
i had a cervical fusion august 2004. subsequestly the bone supplied failed to fuse. The operation now has to be redone. I have attempted to contact Alexian Brothers a number of times and they have refused to answer. I find the action of the hospital suspicious in view of the current situation with bone and tissue supplied by bone banks around the country. The success rate for this type of operation is in excess of 90% and my doctor was clearly confident it would be a success. When questioned about why it was not successful, the doctor's response was that he did not know what was wrong with it. Clearly I have received bone from a very old donor who can have been suffering from osteoporosis or some other bone deficiency. My condition has deteriorated and the cost of another operation will be in excess of $70,000, plus loss of income. What is your advice?
The first step is to find out if Alexian Brothers received body parts from the company in question. Only a handful of hospitals worked with the company under indictment, and I do not think Alexian Brothers is one of them. If you call the hospital, they have a duty to inform you if they received any of the suspect body parts.
You should also contact our firm to discuss a possible medical malpractice case. The bones failure to fuse may have been from an improperly performed surgery rather than defective bone replacement.