Posted on 12/24/2005 8:19:34 AM PST by new yorker 77
Michael Bruno's life had been uncomplicated: He was an immigrant who worked hard, spoke his mind and succumbed to kidney cancer two years ago at 75.
"Typical Italian cab driver," recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything." It's only after death that his story became ghoulish.
Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people — including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke — were secretly carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin and tendons without required permission from their families. Authorities allege the body parts were then sold for a profit.
Worse, health officials fear some of the stolen body parts were diseased, and could infect patients who received them in skin grafts, dental implants or other orthopedic procedures — a risk concealed by paperwork doctored with forged signatures and false information.
"It's not just disrespectful to my father," said Vito Bruno, who has sued one of the funeral homes. "It's an absolutely hideous crime against other people."
In the Cooke case, authorities confirmed this week that investigators contacted the late broadcaster's family after finding paperwork indicating his bones had been removed and sold by a Fort Lee, N.J., tissue bank, Biomedical Tissue Services, before he was cremated. Cooke, best known as the host of PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre," died from cancer last year at 95 in Manhattan.
The family insists it never signed off on the procedure, and that someone had falsified documents by changing his cause of death to heart attack, and by lowering his age to 85. Harvesting bones from cancer patients violates rules by the Food and Drug Administration.
A daughter, Susan Cooke Kittredge, said the family was "shocked and saddened" by the news.
"That people in need would have received his body parts, considering his age and the fact he was ill when he died, is appalling to the family, as is that his remains were violated," she said.
The probe — first reported by the Daily News in October — has uncovered other gruesome images. In one instance, the corpse of a Queens grandmother that investigators exhumed last month had nearly all the bones removed below the waist and replaced with PVC pipes.
A state grand jury in Brooklyn has been hearing evidence against at least a half dozen funeral homes in the borough and against Biomedical Tissue Services. Authorities allege that they illegally profited by conspiring to sell stolen body parts, and say indictments could be handed up early next year.
The brewing scandal's reach extends far beyond the New York City area.
In the fall, the FDA ordered a recall of products produced by tissue processors in New Jersey, Florida, Georgia and Texas, all customers of Biomedical Tissue Services. Since the announcement, authorities in Canada have determined that about 300 potentially tainted products were imported there, and used for dental surgery on at least two patients.
Health officials advised physicians that patients who were implanted with the tissue should be tested for HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. The officials said they believed the health hazards were minimal, and no infections have been reported since the FDA warning.
But past cases have demonstrated dire risks.
In 2001, a Minnesota man died after a knee surgery from an infection caused by a bacterium traced to cartilage from an infected donor. A year later, health officials in Oregon announced that several patients were infected with hepatitis C after receiving donated organs and tissue from a single corpse.
Authorities say the Brooklyn case stems from a deal struck between a dentist who started Biomedical Tissue Services, Michael Mastromarino, 42, of Fort Lee, and Joseph Nicelli, 49, an embalmer and funeral parlor operator from Staten Island.
Investigators suspect Nicelli helped secure access to tissue and bones from funeral directors for $500 to $1,000 a body. Mastromarino allegedly would remove the body parts, then ship them to processors paying thousands of dollars per order.
Attorneys for Nicelli and Mastromarino did not respond to numerous phone messages left by The Associated Press, but have previously denied that their clients did anything wrong. A phone number listed for Biomedical Tissue Services was disconnected.
The Brooklyn case demonstrates the potential pitfalls of allowing funeral homes and tissue banks to do business without stricter oversight, said Annie Cheney, author of the upcoming book "Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains."
"The fact that these people were supposedly able to get away with this for so long is shocking," she said.
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Yeah, I thought this story was a joke the first time I saw it, or that the man had been dead for years, and they dug up his bones. Ick. Just goes to show you should always be cremated and your ashes sprinkled out int he ocean or some such. Make sure you're destroyed.
This is the depths that some depraved individuals will sink to.
Well, it's the funeral home that does the cremating, so they could just harvest away and then burn the evidence.
Sick!
Why waste some perfectly good body parts by burning them when they could help someone still alive? I hope when I die they use as much of my body as possible. In any case, I'd hardly be in a position to care what happens.
Don't get me wrong, though. I think these people should be vigorously pursued and prosecuted.
Shades of "The Island."
How horrible! I feel badly for the families. Nice Christmas present for them.
This is exactly why we have to keep saying that cloning, fetal stem cell, etc. work will sooner or later develop into a horrible thing. You cannot rule out greed and opportunism from the equation. This happened here. Imagine what happens in other parts of the world.
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Unless a loved one accompanies the body to the furnace, requests to view it one last time before it goes to be cremated, watch the casket be placed in the zapper and observe it's imolation, how can you be sure what they give you in the urn is actually the deceased ones ashes? It could be someone elses, it could be probably almost anything unless you're familiar with what ashes look like. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but really, an unscrupulous undertaker, preying on people at the most emotional time of their lives, is not beyond reproach for doing a switcheroo or some other dastardly deed. Remember that creep in the South who just dumped the bodies all over the woods (I think it was dozens or hundreds over a decade or two) to collect the service fees and avoid some of his costs?
Okay- how about this.... when you die, have your family leave you at home for a week and a half, just to make sure you're all gross, icky, and unusable. Heh? Prop you up at the table, and business as usual for a week and a half. Then, off to the furnace, or nuclear reactor core. I'm liking this.
The question that's coming is, "Do these dead bodies belong to the person that used to be alive or to the state?"
Of course in a country that takes 40-45% of your life, labor and productivity in taxes it can be argued that 40-45% of you belongs to the state now, while alive. So why should we think we own the other 55% our body after death?
I see. I've given instructions as part of my will, assuming my family follows my wishes. Put me in a cheap box, ride me through church and toss me in the ground. As for donating parts, not really. We all gotta go sometime, and I'd rather not donate parts unless the family gets the benefit of it. Call me selfish...this whole matter is strange. Donating your body so others can benefit is fine, if it was truly charitable. But it doesn't sound like it is. I figure science will soon figure out how to grow new body parts without being a ghoul about it. Then again, maybe we'll all be atomized by nuclear war given the chance increases as wacko nations get a hold of atomic weapons. I guess it won't matter then, huh?
Alistair Cooke WAS cremated, and "his" cremains sent to the family in England.
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