Imagine, the scene; News reports say“FBI agents raid a lab and crematorium in Shiller park, outside Chicago.” The Biological Resource Center of Illinois deals with bodies donated to science - sending cadavers and body parts to medical schools and laboratories for research. Now they say they are under federal investigation for having business dealings with Arthur Rathburn - the former coordinator of the University of Michigan's anatomical donation program from 1984 to 1990.
I was shocked that this even happens. I would assume most Americans are just as blind as myself. The ones who are aware of this, to turn a blind eye and pretend they know nothing. In “body brokers,” the author provides several jaw dropping accounts of how a cadaver’s
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At each stage of the journey, there is ample opportunity for theft. At the hospital, a nurse or an attendant shuttles the corpse first to the morgue, where it’s stored in a steel refrigerator. If a family requests it, an autopsy may be performed. As an autopsy is being performed, this provides an ideal situation for body brokers inclined to theft. Pathologists routinely take samples of specimens relevant to their investigation—a slice of kidney, for instance—which get preserved in paraffin blocks and transferred onto slides. An honest pathologist may remove a whole brain and keep it fixed in preservative for weeks. Otherwise, the brain matter will not yield its secrets. This is perfectly legal if the doctor has permission from the deceased’s family. If the body is to be embalmed, the procedure takes place at a funeral home. But there too, a corpse may not be safe. The funeral home may have an agreement with a tissue bank. Each body may produce a tidy kickback, a thousand dollars, perhaps. Or, more disturbing, the funeral director may own his own tissue bank, earning thousands of dollars selling the parts of each corpse entrusted to his care. He might not bother to ask permission.
Relatives rarely have the opportunity—or the inclination—to
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After meeting with the company’s founder, a man named Augie Perna, Mr. Brown agreed to enter into a partnership with them — he would go on to expand his crematorium and open up a body donation facility in the new building. He could now offer his customers a package where they would donate their body and receive a free cremation, though not before Brown removed and stored any parts he wanted. It was, as the title of Cheney’s chapter re-states, “An Ideal Situation.” It wasn’t until several years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a guilty plea to sixty-six counts of mutilation of remains and embezzlement later, that Brown’s business ended thanks to an employee
Instead, he performed the autopsies in abandoned houses, funeral home garages, hospital loading docks, and parking lots. Once, he even performed an autopsy on a door laid across two 55 gallon drums. Erdmann made detectives and prosecutors job more easy, so they turned a blind eye to his odd ways. By 1992, defense attorneys began to challenge and expose Erdmanns methods and findings. In a fatal hit and run case, Erdmann testified that the victim had died instantly of a broken neck. He based this ‘finding’ off of an examination of the boy's brain. Another forensic pathologist had exhumed the body, and he found out that Erdmann hadn’t even opened the boy’s skull, which you need to do to examine a brain. He then lost his Texas medical license in 1992. Another thing I find interesting is that he kept blood samples in his own refrigerator with his food. I find that very
In the book “Death's Acre”, By Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson they tell readers how they got to where they are today in their careers and how Dr. Bill Bass became famous for the well known “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. In “Deaths Acre” Bass invites people across the world who are reading to go behind the gates of the body farm where he revolutionized forensic anthropology. Bass takes us on a journey on how he went from not knowing if this is what he wanted to do for a living to being in a career that he would never trade. He tells us about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explored the headless corpse of a person whose identity shocked many people included the police, divulges how the telltale traces and case
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
Johns Hopkins Hospital would use people in their “public wards”, who were predominately of low socioeconomic status, as research material without any permission or knowledge of their participation (Skloot, 2010, p. 30). The main ethical principles that apply in the this scenario of not receiving consent to have personal information and even bodily material used for research are: Integrity (1.04), Rights and Prerogatives of Clients (2.05), Characteristics of Responsible Research (9.02), and Informed Consent (9.03). This dilemma was not handled correctly because doctors during that time were interested in studying cancer cells and believed that it was acceptable to take people’s cells as a form of payment because they were receiving free medical treatment. Henrietta, in particular, was never asked or even told that her healthy and tumorous cells were being extracted during the day of her first cancer treatment (p. 33). Those at stake during this particular issue are the patients in the public wards, including Henrietta, the doctors Richard TeLinde, George Gey, and Howard Jones, the Lacks family, and many other families who do not know their loved ones are being used for science. Although laws were not set in place at the time, the doctors should have been presenting patients with consent forms and fully disclosing all the information pertaining to how they
Results, by a single cursory document, came out from Republican Alley. In early October of 1991 “eleven bodies had been found” (Kutz 1994). When excavation ceased, due to community and political complications, more than four hundred men, women and children were exhumed from the oldest cemetery containing African Americans in the United States.
The human tissue act, first was idealized in 1999 to 2000, based on the events at Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital (Alder Hey). In this case organs and tissues were removed from deceased children without proper consent from the parents. The hospital explained that this is was common for them to use or store the organs and tissues from adults and children without acquiring any consent from family members or next of kin. It became quite apparent that there were no conclusive
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
The sad story is still mostly a mystery because of the ongoing investigation, and both the police and autopsy report were withheld from the public. What is known, is that a nineteen-year-old freshman at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) named John Fiocco Jr. was reported missing from his dormitory on March 25th 2006 after drinking. Police reported finding blood (that was later identified as belonging to Fiocco) around a dumpster outside of his dormitory. It was never made clear if it had any connection to the trash chute above, but his body was recovered at the Bucks County landfill in Pennsylvania. (Landfill Isn't About Fiocco)
“Death's Acre” tells about the career of a forensic hero, Dr. Bill Bass, creator of the famous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee-the world's only research facility devoted to studying human decomposition. He tells about his life and how he became an anthropoligist. He tells about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explores the mystery of a headless corpse whose identity surprised police.
By now, you have read on the Keenan Trial Blog, Chris Carver’s and Michael Bristow’s Autopsy in a MVC case.
Chapter 6: Mary Roach explains the use of cadavers for weapon experiments. Although it was sometimes ineffective for evidence evaluation scientist replaced them with animals such as pigs to receive better data. Changes like these were made to have more efficient experiments and have easier removal.
Death raises many questions but leaves humankind with few answers. Overall it’s an avoided topic because it reminds us of our own mortality. With the help of modern medicine, the death of a loved one can be the saving grace for another’s life. Ironically those restricted from this life giving ability are those with the least regard for the sanctity of life, murderers. Currently, there is little to no strict policy regarding the donation of prisoners organs, it’s typically dealt with on a case by case basis. As a result of this loosely constructed course of action, those who ultimately pay for its disorganized structure are in fact those most in need of organs. Thus, a more rigid policy needs to be enacted especially in the case of murderers, who are condemned to be executed and as a consequence their organs as well. It’s a fact that convicted murderers have little to no rights when it comes to their bodies, however it’s a shame that the justice system doesn’t utilize this to save parts of
The second possibility about the burial is just as creepy. Some families cannot afford the cost of the funeral, so they put the deceased into a temporary coffin. Once the money is raised, the corpse has to be raised and walk to their new resting place. Sometimes it may take years for the family to raise the money. Hence the Walking Dead of Indonesia.
There is very much controversy surrounding the case of the very popular Henrietta Lacks. One of the major implications on the situation that people have a problem with is the lack of consent obtained by Johns Hopkins University and the doctors involved. All though it was not common place as it is in today’s society, many feel that it was not ethical to perform medical procedures without the patient and their family being given all of the knowledge regarding the situation. The tissue sample taken by doctor Howard W. Jones was unbeknown to the family which violates the ethical respect for the person that should be held. A sample of someone’s DNA is not anything that should be taken lightly or regarded as unimportant. It should have been a decision made by Henrietta, and had she of known of the procedure she may have voted against donating to research. This lack of incorporating Henrietta and her family caused there to be a dismal amount of respect for persons shown by the University and all
What many do not realize is the truth about organ donation. The body of the donor after the surgery is not mangled up and is presentable for the funeral. Organ donation is ethical and should not be looked down upon. Organ donating is there to save lives, not to hurt anyone. Many people think that they should be paid or given something in return for donating their organs, which is... ...