Posted on 10/04/2007 7:12:39 PM PDT by nmh
Three Philadelphia-Area Funeral Directors Nabbed in Scheme Selling Body Parts
Thursday, October 04, 2007
PHILADELPHIA Three funeral directors sold hundreds of bodies to a former oral surgeon who allegedly collected the bones, tissue and skin from the corpses to be used in transplants, a grand jury charged Thursday after a 16-month investigation.
The 244 bodies fetched about $1,000 each, the grand jury found, with the body parts being transplanted in unsuspecting medical patients worldwide.
Michael Mastromarino, who operated the now-defunct Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., ran the scheme with help from a team of "cutters" who stole the body parts, authorities said. Mastromarino is already facing charges in New York for allegedly plundering 1,077 bodies, including those from Philadelphia.
...
While the mostly poor families thought their loved ones were being cremated quickly, the bodies were often left unrefrigerated for days, sometimes in alleys beside the funeral home, until a cutter arrived, authorities said.
"One of the cutters said it was like the back of a butcher shop, it was so dirty," Abraham said.
The funeral directors forged death certificates that said the donors had died of heart attacks or blunt-force trauma but were otherwise healthy, prosecutors said. In one such case, the donor was HIV-positive and suffered from hepatitis C and cancer. One woman who believes she contracted hepatitis from a tainted body part is pursuing a civil suit, Abraham said.
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The company sold the parts to treat burns, replace broken bones and provide for other medical needs, the 111-page indictment said. The black-market sales occurred from at least February 2004 through September 2005, prosecutors said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This is disgusting.
No respect for the living who were sickened by tainted material.
Very true!
...the bodies were often left unrefrigerated for days, sometimes in alleys beside the funeral home...
WTF???!!!
Hey with a murder count almost as high as DC they gotta make a buck.
So what happened to the oral surgeon?
And here I thought they were making an arm and a leg in those mortuaries....
There is nothing lower than an organlegger.
I got to go brush my teeth.....
How could the receiving doctor not know or rather not test this stuff to make sure it was suitable? This is like something out of a horror movie.
“...parts is parts.”
What’s the fuss, the dead don’t care?!
Second posting of this kind of stuff—other was Tennessee—in the the past 10 days to two weeks.
How many more are out there?
Bingo - thanks for the reference.
And if we think it bad now, just wait until the Governement gets involved....
I used to think Larry Niven just just waaaaay ahead of the times, now, I’m not so sure.
Yes, but Ringworld is still unstable.
I don’t know.
It shocked and disgusted me.
Ya, I read the “Children of” book. Where can I get an autodoc?
As a plot device it cannot be beat....
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