Posted on 12/03/2007 12:24:32 PM PST by Calpernia
Hundreds of Body Parts Recalled in New Tainted Tissue Scandal
Aug 23, 2006 | AP
A leading medical firm has quietly recalled hundreds of human tissue products destined for transplants around the nation that were supplied by a North Carolina body parts broker believed to have a tainted history.
The broker used an unsterile embalming room to carve up dozens of corpses to procure tissue, a Raleigh funeral home director said Tuesday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration shut down the body broker on Friday, but refuses to say how many people may have received potentially risky tissue.
It is the second scandal in less than a year in the booming tissue transplant industry. Cadaver tissue is used in more than a million transplants each year in such routine operations as back surgery and knee repairs. While such donated tissue does tremendous good, it is also little regulated, a three-month Associated Press investigation found earlier this year.
Improperly processed or poorly tested tissue can lead to infections like hepatitis or AIDS or even death. Last year a scandal unfolded around Biomedical Tissue Services, a New Jersey company accused of using stolen bodies and of shipping nearly 20,000 potentially tainted body parts.
Federal authorities kept the North Carolina episode quiet until late last Friday, when the FDA shut down Donor Referral Services of Raleigh, N.C. The FDA said the company, run by Philip Guyett, had "serious deficiencies" in its processing, donor screening and record-keeping. The government accused him of altering records to overlook such problems as cancer or drug use by the deceased donor.
But on July 6 the tissue provider, AlloSource of Centennial, Colo., began its own recall of about 300 Guyett-provided transplant parts that went to a company it had acquired, an AlloSource spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Guyett, 38, hung up on a reporter trying to reach him for comment on Friday.
The FDA won't say how many potentially tainted body parts might have made it to hospitals for transplant. But two companies doing business with Guyett told The Associated Press Tuesday that they know of at least 60 bodies cut up and at least 300 body parts that were recalled. And those firms were not the only business associates that Guyett had, they said.
"This is something of the same magnitude at least of what we saw with Biomedical Tissue," said former FDA top attorney and tissue safety expert Areta Kupchyk. "Many people could be affected. Even if it's only 60 donors, that could affect hundreds of people."
(snip)
Well, thank goodness New Jersey is solving the tissue/organ harvest problem!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1942719/posts?page=19
Bill aims to boost organ donations (New Jersey)
You see this macabric insanity?
Have you heard at all what the name of Dick Codey’s family’s funeral home is? Curious that it would be so hard to look up.
More
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/01/human-chop-shop-operation-ultimate-in.html
Human “chop shop” operation: The ultimate in healthcare corruption
Excerpt:
New York and federal authorities have indicated they believe that Mastromarino paid funeral directors for access to corpses and then sold the illegally obtained parts to legitimate tissue-and-bone processors in New Jersey, Georgia, Texas and Florida.
What scares me is that if somebody took my body parts they would be getting hep C. I think this is disgusting & they need to look into all funeral homes. I plan to get cremated anyway just in case.
In North Carolina, they were taking the entire bodies that were set for cremation and giving the families non human ash.
I don’t know what to think anymore now...Shaking my head some more.
It is really a surreal situation.
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