Woman Sues For Receiving Illegally Harvested Body Part

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Woman Sues For Receiving Illegally Harvested Body Part

TALLAHASSEE, FLA---A Tallahassee woman has filed a lawsuit against Tutogen Medical Inc. claiming that the material provided by the company for her bone transplant had been illegally harvested from a corpse which hadn’t been screened for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.Tutogen was one of five companies that received tissue and bone which officials say was taken from cadavers at six funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.Kay Phelps, 43, received a bone transplant to replace a bone in her face and since her surgery, although she has tested negative for HIV, she says she has undergone much anguish.Class action status is being sought on behalf of all Floridians who might have received such tissue which was sold to medical supply houses. Mastromarino, the owner of a New Jersey biomedical company and three other men including Brooklyn embalmer ph Nicelli and two of Mastromarino’s employees, were allegedly involved a five year, multi-million scheme during which human tissues were stolen without consent from thousands of corpses before they were buried or cremated.The cadavers were allegedly taken from unsuspecting New York funeral homes and the bone and skin sold for transplants.The four men have been indicted by a Brooklyn grand jury for participating in a scheme to steal tissue from the corpses of people who never gave consent to be donors. The tissue was then sold to tissue transplant companies where it would be used in surgical procedures around the world.According to the 122-count indictment, the team forged death certificates and organ-donor consent forms to create the appearance that the tissue was harvested legally. Though tissue transplant guidelines set age limits and health requirements for donors, the defendants falsified the ages of their victims, so in one case, a 95-year-old cancer victim was listed as a healthy 85-year-old who died of heart failure.It is illegal for people to sell their tissue or other body parts. They can only be donated, and only with the expressed, written consent of the donor, before the person dies. However, on the open market, one body can bring in as much as $250,000 for harvesting and transplant companies.Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon, got into the tissue business after losing his dentist’s license. Nicelli, of 49 Clifton Ave., Staten Island, owned & Son funeral home at 1852 Bath Ave., Brooklyn, before partnering with Mastromarino in a tissue trading company, BioMedical Tissue Services and BioTissue Technologies. The companies were licensed in New Jersey but had offices in Brooklyn. Crucetta and Aldorasi both worked with Nicelli and Mastromarino removing body parts.The investigation began after people who bought from Nicelli found numerous inconsistencies in the bookkeeping. They came to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to complain that money paid in advance for future funerals was missing from the business’s accounting records. The investigation that followed uncovered a scheme to steal bones from unwilling donors.In a secret room in & Sons, Mastromarino would remove bones, tendons, heart valves and other tissue from recently deceased people. When the bodies were of people who had not consented to the procedures, or were too old or ill to donate tissue, Mastromarino and Nicelli doctored their death certificates and forged consent forms, according to the indictment. In those cases, Mastromarino replaced the bones with plastic polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, piping and repaired the incisions, so they would not be noticed at the funeral. 3-08-06

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/030806BodyPartsSue.html