American Body Snatchers: grisly traffic in body parts in New York - No peace or freedom in America, even after death

Associated Press (AP)
April 29, 2006

The Body Snatchers

Stolen body parts linked to patients' illnesses

By Adam Goldman

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Assistant District Attorney Josh Hanshaft, center, holds a photograph of an X-ray
showing the pelvic area of a deceased person with PVC plumbing pipe inserted where
bones should have been, at a news conference announcing the indictment of four
individuals including the head of Biomedical Tissue Services, in this February 23,
2006, file photo in New York. A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services, is
accused of failing to gain consent to take bones, tendons, ligaments, skin and other
tissue from cadavers. At least a dozen people who had routine operations claim they
caught deadly viruses and other germs from body parts stolen from corpses in a
ghoulish scandal that has sent hundreds of people for tests.


New York -- At least a dozen people who had routine operations claim they caught
deadly viruses and other germs from body parts stolen from corpses in a ghoulish
scandal that has sent hundreds of people for tests.

The patients tested positive for germs that cause AIDS, hepatitis or syphilis after
receiving tissue transplants, according to their lawyers and court records.
Lawsuits have been filed for two Midwestern men, one in Nebraska and one in Ohio.
Both claim they caught a hepatitis virus from the tissue implanted in back and spine
operations -- a contention that lawyers acknowledge will be difficult to prove.

Lawyers for both men say they know of no other factors that would put their clients
at risk for hepatitis.

"It pretty much turned my world upside down", said one of the patients, Ned Jackson,
49, of Omaha, Nebraska.

The Associated Press (AP) talked to lawyers representing at least a dozen other
clients who say medical tests show they have the AIDS or hepatitis virus or syphilis
bacteria -- all of which can be acquired from infected tissue. Those suits have not
yet been filed and the lawyers are continuing to investigate their claims.

So far, about two dozen lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the
country, most seeking class-action status for hundreds of people who were implanted
with tissues that the U.S. government recalled.

A New Jersey company, Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd. (BTS), is accused of failing to
gain consent to take bones, tendons, ligaments, skin and other tissue from cadavers.
The most famous example involved the corpse of Alistair Cooke, the longtime host of
the PBS series "Masterpiece Theater". Cooke died of cancer at age 95, and his leg
bones were removed and shipped to tissue processors for use in medical procedures.

About 1 million procedures a year involve implants of cadaver tissues. The companies
that process the body parts for those surgeries say their products are safe and
believe the case involving Biomedical Tissue of Fort Lee, New Jersey, is an
aberration.

The owner of BTS and three others have pleaded not guilty to the charges against
them. BTS has since closed. At least 8000 people received BTS tissue, according to
one of the tissue distributors.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said the chance of getting a disease from
BTS tissue is low. But plaintiff's lawyers are challenging that assertion.

"There has never been a widespread dissemination of recalled tissue ... What's
happened here presents a whole new scenario", said Philadelphia lawyer Larry R.
Cohan, who's representing about 130 people who say they got BTS tissue.

Steve Fogle thought the risk was low when he had spinal fusion surgery at Good
Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati on August 29, 2005.

When the Blanchester, Ohio, man got a letter dated December 9, 2005, from his doctor
explaining the tissue that was implanted in his neck and spine might carry an
infectious disease, he didn't think much about it.

The letter and other documents explained that the tissue had been "terminally
sterilized" and stated repeatedly the risk of infection was "low". The letter also
said tissue had been recalled due to "improper documentation" and there were no
reports of "adverse reactions".

Fogle, 41, felt reassured and put off getting tested for hepatitis, syphilis and HIV
as recommended by the FDA.

Two months later, Fogle, who is married and has no tattoos or history of intravenous
drug use risk factors for hepatitis C learned the true circumstances of the recall
after watching a TV news report describing the macabre scandal.

The news from his test in Milford, Ohio, was not good: He was infected with Hepatitis
C, according to his affidavit.

A series of follow-up tests with his family doctor and a liver specialist confirmed
the results. His wife's tests have been negative.

Testing positive for a germ does not necessarily mean someone will develop a disease.
For example, many people who test positive for hepatitis C will test negative six
months later if the body's immune system has defeated and cleared the virus.

Fogle declined to comment for this story but his lawyer, Joseph M. Lyon, said Fogle
should have been made fully aware of the allegations against BTS.

"The notice minimizes the risk in this case", Lyon said. "It appears when you read
this letter it is a hypothetical risk. They downplayed the entire role of BTS".

Lawyers say the doctors and companies that processed and distributed the tissue
diminished the risks in warning letters they sent to patients.

"People left the doctor's office thinking 'big deal,' it was a document error", said
Patrick T. D'Arcy, a New Jersey lawyer representing about 200 people who received the
suspect tissue.

In Ned Jackson's case, he had surgery on his lower back at Alegent Health Immanuel
Medical Center in Omaha on August 12, 2003. More than two years later, his doctor
told him the tissue used in his surgery had been recalled.

Blood tests indicated Jackson, who's disabled, had contracted hepatitis B and C,
according to the lawsuit.

"To hear something like that is really upsetting", he said in a telephone interview.

Both Fogle and Jackson will have to prove their case if the companies involved
decline to settle. Plaintiff's lawyers acknowledge proving it won't be easy. They'll
have to generate extensive medical histories and cement the connection to BTS.

"The proof issues involved are certainly challenging", D'Arcy said.

Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), said his agency is investigating reports of positive test
results in tissue recipients.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/tissueTransplantsFAQ.html

"It will be very difficult to determine with any certainty if there is any connection
between the infection in the tissue recipient and the tissue donor", Srinivasan said.

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"FDA orders Biomedical Tissue Services, Ltd., to cease manufacturing" (February 2006)
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Washington Post -- January 28, 2006

In New York, a Grisly Traffic in Body Parts

Illegal Sales Worry Dead's Kin, Tissue Recipients

By Michael Powell and David Segal

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Daniel George and Son Funeral Home is one of six Brooklyn funeral homes where
Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), headed by Michael Mastromarino, below, is alleged
to have harvested body parts without permission. As many as 1000 bodies may have been
desecrated.

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Michael Mastromarino (42), seen outside Jersey home is at center of ghoul probe
involving Raccuglia & Sons funeral home and others.

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Joseph Nicelli (49), a master embalmer and funeral home entrepreneur, worked out of
English Brothers Funeral Home in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

New York -- 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 (FDA)
inspectors are investigating dozens of funeral homes in New York City and Biomedical
Tissue Services (BTS) 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.

The scandal raises questions about the safety and proper supervision of a
billion-dollar-a-year industry that supplies skin and tissue for 1 million tissue
transplants each year. But patients are most confounded by the skin-crawling fact
that no one knows from whom the bone and tissue was harvested.

Heather Augustin, 42, lives in southern New Jersey and had two disks in her neck
removed last year, supposedly replaced with bone taken from a youngish corpse. Three
months later, her surgeon told her that her new neck bone had in fact come from rogue
funeral homes, likely from the cadaver of a very old person.

Augustin hasn't slept particularly well since.

"You think, 'I'm carrying a bone in my neck from someone who didn't want to get
chopped up' ", she said. "I'm, like, in total shock. What am I supposed to do with
these thoughts?"

FDA spokesmen say risk of serious infection is fairly remote, though an agency
advisory adds the caveat that the "actual infectious risk is unknown". A 41-year-old
woman who underwent back surgery on Long Island and two patients in New Jersey say
they contracted syphilis from stolen bone tissue.

The FDA forbids body-harvesting firms from cutting up cancerous and diseased corpses.
In all cases, harvesters are supposed to screen cadavers based on age and cause of
death, and harvested tissue is tested for disease and treated with antiviral or
antibacterial agents.

"We know that they obtained these bodies in a fraudulent way and off the scale of
acceptable practice", FDA spokesman Stephen King said.

Bone can be transplanted whole or fashioned into chips for spinal fusion surgery.
Much harvested skin -- about 18,900 square feet of it in 2003 -- goes to burn
victims.

The Daily News broke the scandal in October, fingering several Brooklyn funeral home
operators who had harvested patients without the permission of family members. In one
case, reporters found that the English Brothers Funeral Home had forged consent and
cause-of-death documents and allowed Biomedical Tissue Services to harvest the
cancer-ridden body of Michael Bruno, a 75-year-old former cabbie.

That article ran under the headline "They Carved Up My Father!" The funeral home did
not return calls seeking comment.

The New York City medical examiner's office in the past few months has exhumed three
bodies from cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens. Investigators discovered one female
cadaver missing about half its body.

The New Jersey biomedical firm shipped large coolers filled with tissue to five
suppliers across the nation. No one knows how many patients are affected. But the
examples uncovered so far are suggestive:

Between early 2004 and September 2005, 60 surgical patients at Shore Memorial
Hospital in Somers Point, N.J., received implants said to have originated with the
corpse-snatching ring. Another 74 patients in Nebraska received stolen bone tissue
during surgeries in the same period.

Biomedical Tissue Services operated out of a third-floor office suite not far from
the George Washington Bridge, on the fringe of a large industry with a low profile.
Its president is Michael Mastromarino, who once had a thriving dental practice off
Fifth Avenue and a specialty in implant surgery. Over the years, he struggled with
drug abuse and was sued for malpractice by several patients, one of whom accused
Mastromarino of deserting a patient under general anesthesia in mid-operation.

Mastromarino was found, according to the lawsuit, in his bathroom with a hypodermic
needle stuck in his arm, blood on the floor. Mastromarino surrendered his dental
license six years ago, went into rehab and two years ago went into the tissue
recovery business.

His lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said his client never broke the law. It's the funeral
parlor's job to obtain consent from prospective donors, he said. Mastromarino and his
employees would simply show up and harvest tissue, taking a cursory look to make sure
it was viable and the body as described.

"If you're told by the funeral home that it's a 45-year-old woman and you show up and
she's 90 years old, there's a problem", Gallucci said.

Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) was not an accredited member of the American
Association of Tissue Banks (http://www.aatb.org), nor did the company ever apply.
But Robert Rigney, who heads the association, said he doubted anyone now living with
tissue originating from the company is in any kind of health danger, because the
processors the company dealt with would have subjected any tissue to screening.

Still, Rigney is appalled. "If these people did what is alleged here, what they have
done is unconscionable", he said.

Alistair Cooke died of cancer at age 95 in March 2004. He wanted to be cremated, and
harbored a horror of being cut open. His daughter, a pastor in Vermont, said district
attorney's investigators contacted her recently to say they had discovered forged
papers, allegedly signed by Cooke's family, allowing his bones and tissue to be
removed. Investigators said they had evidence his body parts had been implanted in
patients but declined to provide details.

Cooke was far too old to be an acceptable candidate for tissue harvesting, and his
daughter, the Reverend Susan Cooke Kittredge, said she had never given permission.

"I am surprised by how upset I am", said Kittredge, who said she favors organ
donation. "You wanted to remember your loved one in the fullness of life. But I've
lived with the image of his cadaver pressed against my face now for a month.

"You have lives torn asunder, and I hope the people responsible for these
desecrations get their comeuppance".

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