Philadelphia undertakers admit selling corpses

Two former Philadelphia funeral directors on Tuesday admitted to selling cadavers to a ring that cut them up and sold the body parts to hospitals for implants.

Gerald Garzone and his brother Louis Garzone pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired with others to take bones, skin and organs from 244 bodies in their funeral homes between February 2004 and September 2005.

They were part of a scheme that plundered 1,077 bodies in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania without the permission of relatives in an operation that netted the conspirators $3.8 million.

One of the bodies belonged to Alistair Cooke, the British foreign correspondent known for his "Letter from America" for the BBC and as host of the PBS television show "Masterpiece Theater". He died of cancer in 2004.

Michael Mastromarino, 44, a New Jersey dentist, was sentenced in June to a minimum of 18 years and a maximum of 54 years in prison after admitting to leading the scheme.

Some of the bodies were infected with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases, and used in transplants by at least five Philadelphia-area hospitals, prompting hundreds of lawsuits by the families of transplant recipients.

Embalmer Granted Separate NYC Trial in Body Parts Scandal

A former funeral parlor owner and embalmer accused in a plot to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants has been granted a separate trial because he needs more time to recover from a serious head injury, prosecutors said Monday.

Joseph Nicelli has been rehabilitating since suffering the injury in January by falling off a roof, but has not made enough progress to appear at an upcoming trial with three co-defendants. The trial is expected to begin sometime early next year in Brooklyn.

The four men were charged last year with removing skin, bone and other parts from hundreds of bodies at funeral homes in New York without family permission. A related case involving nearly 250 bodies has been brought in Philadelphia as well.

Seven funeral directors have since pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges and agreed to cooperate. Lawyers have said one was the director of a funeral home that took parts from the body of the late "Masterpiece Theatre'' host Alistair Cooke.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1583825/posts
Official: 4 Face Charges in Stolen Body Parts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1546273/posts
Details Emerge From Body Part Theft Case

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1571528/posts
N.J. Firm Closed Amid Body Parts Probe

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1566574/posts
Bolster trust, chase greed away from death's door (NY-bones stolen from crematorium ..unreal)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1553644/posts
Stolen Human Tissue

Activity related to the organ trade around the world Hat Tip to LouSchuler

http://www.louschuler.com/archives/health/index.htmlM

The Sum of Your Parts

I meant to write about the trade in stolen body parts from cadavers when I first read about it months ago. The topic has particular resonance for me because one of my unpublished novels revolved around the subject. The bad guys were killing people off, and pursuing the hero, because they needed certain materials for medical experiments, and these materials weren't parts of a human body that a living person was likely to give up for any amount of money.

(To give you a hint which body parts were involved, the title was Modern Biceps.)

Now the issue is back in the news:

Last week prosecutors charged four men, including Nicelli and the ring's supposed leader, a former Manhattan dentist named Michael Mastromarino, with running a multimillion-dollar body-snatching business that looted bones and tissue from more than a thousand corpses. The men, they say, then sold the body parts to legitimate companies that supplied hospitals around the United States. Hundreds of unsuspecting people have received the tissue, which is used in such procedures as joint and heart-valve replacements, back surgery, dental implants and skin grafts. Many are now rushing to doctors to be tested for tainted tissue. Some have already filed civil lawsuits. (One New Jersey lawyer alone has signed up some 200 clients.)

Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes didn't try to hide his disgust in announcing the 122-count indictment, which included charges of opening graves, body stealing, forgery, grand larceny and racketeering. "What happened here ... is like something out of a cheap horror movie." [Or, in my case, an unpublished mystery novel.] ...

Mastromarino, who once had a lucrative dental practice, surrendered his license in 2000 because he was addicted to the painkiller Demerol. He started a new career as a body harvester in nearby New Jersey, opening Biomedical Tissue Services, an FDA-registered company that appeared completely legit. Nicelli allegedly got many of the corpses from funeral directors in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia who had hired him to embalm them in his Brooklyn facility. A single harvested body could yield $7,000. Even after Nicelli sold the funeral home, he allegedly continued to help Mastromarino sneak into the secret operating room at night to dissect corpses. To hide their crimes, prosecutors say, Mastromarino and his cohorts replaced looted bones with plumbing pipes, and stuffed their surgical gloves and gowns into the bodies before stitching them back together. After robbing the bodies, the men allegedly forged death certificates to hide that the tissue had often been stolen from bodies that would have been rejected as donors being too old or sick.

We learned late last year that the bones of Alistair Cooke, who died two years ago at 95, were among those stolen:

According to the New York Daily News his bones were stolen by a criminal ring trading body parts.

They were later sold by a biomedical tissue company now under investigation, the paper claims.

When Cooke died of lung cancer that spread to his bones in March 2004, his body was taken to a funeral home in Manhattan.

Two days later, relatives of the iconic broadcaster received his ashes, which were then scattered in New York's Central Park.

Now they have been told that body snatchers allegedly surgically removed his bones and sold them for more than $7,000 (£4,000) to a company supplying parts for use in dental implants and various orthopaedic procedures.

Still, I'm intrigued by the idea that my bones and ligaments are worth just $7,000.

According to this article, an entire human body would be worth about $80,000, although the columnist doesn't offer any sources for that estimate.

Here's a report from Mozambique (!) that discusses the involvement of criminal gangs in the international black market for human body parts:

These groups usually kill specifically for the purpose of extracting organs. They rely on two methods: one is to contract with other criminals to murder the victims and then to extract the required organs; the second is to kill the victims themselves. The latter approach is often preferred because there is less risk that information relating to the murder will spread. According to police sources, one of the groups was arrested recently in Nampula Province. Corruption of customs officers is often relied upon when borders have to be crossed to supply organs in neighbouring countries. Police officers who obtain information about the activities of these groups are also bribed. Police statistics do not cover the activities of these groups and it is not known whether their activities are on the increase.

According to this, human-organ trafficking is part of the underbelly of globalization:

"The circulation of organs follows the modern routes of capital: from south to north; from third world to first world; from poor to rich; from black and brown to white. ... [Moreover] women are rarely the recipients of purchased organs." Prices of organs also follow world markets. For instance, a kidney in Iraq can be purchased for $500 to $1,000; in Manila, $1,000; in Lima, Peru, aroundr $10,000; and in the United States, $30,000.

Who are the buyers? They are the rich and medically insured, those who reject dialysis, and those who refuse organs from cadavers as "unhealthy, unnatural." Who are the sellers? Essentially, the young and poor, especially in places like Russia and Moldova: those who are in debt, those who are seeking ways to feed their family, and so on. Who are the brokers? Scheper-Hughes identified those who facilitate the buying and selling of organs as "international transplant coordinators," business corporations, doctors, religious and patient rights organizations, and local criminals.

If you're curious about the organ trade in your part of the world, you can use this interactive map.

Finally, there's the urban legend of the tourist who gets drugged and wakes up the next morning with a nasty scar, soon learning that she's been the unwilling victim of kidney theft.

According to Snopes.com, there's no known case of an organ being taken from an unwilling donor (at least not one who lived to tell about it), but there is at least one case of a willing donor later claiming he was robbed:

These horrific claims made by a Turkish man who'd been brought to Britain to sell a kidney are excerpted from a 8 December 1989 Reuters wire report:

Kurdish Moslem Ahmet Koc, 34, said through an interpreter he had been lured to Britain last year with the promise of a job by Turkish businessmen who told him he would need a medical check.He went to a hospital which he thought was a hotel and allowed himself to be given an injection which he believed was a blood test. When he came round he was told his appendix had been taken out. It was only three days later that he was told his kidney had been removed and transplanted into another patient in the hospital but that he would be paid a lot of money for it.

Well, there's news and there's news.

Far from being a victim, Koc was one of a consignment of four Turks who sold a kidney that day. The removals/transplants took place in Britain in 1988, and in January 1989 Koc went on record in Turkey with his tale of organ abduction, likely in an effort to get the organ brokers who'd handled his case into trouble with Turkish authorities. (Which he succeeded in doing -- one of the two brothers who'd arranged the sale was charged in January 1989 and sentenced to two years in jail in May of that year as a result of Koc's testimony. Koc received a two-year suspended sentence for his part in the illegal sale.)

But those were the innocent days of the illicit organ trade, when the victims were not just willing participants, they were compensated and received medical treatment.

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