Thousands of Americans have received bone and other tissue transplants that are potentially contaminated and can lead to AIDS, syphilis, hepatitis, and other dangers.

The story behind this scandal.

As you read this story, keep in mind that the law holds the processors and distributors financially responsible to patients who receive contaminated tissue, even if they are not guilty of criminal conduct.

A New York district attorney has indicted Michael Mastromarino, the owner of New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services Company, and three other employees of the company on 122 charges ghoulish crimes that include taking body parts from cadavers in funeral homes without legal consent and without screening for disease. In some cases the dead person's bones were replaced with PVC plastic plumbing pipe, so the absence of bones would not be noticed when the bodies were viewed at funeral homes

Mastromarino's company sold the pilfered parts to other companies that distributed them for use in transplants that occurred at hospitals and medical facilities nationwide. Unlike organs such as lungs, hearts and kidneys, which are handled only by a network of nonprofit groups, tissues - including bones, heart valves, skin and ligaments - can be processed for profit.

The federal Food and Drug Administration (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.

The FDA is concerned that the parts could be infected with the AIDS virus, syphilis and hepatitis, diseases the government says were never tested for by Biomedical Tissue Service. "We know that they obtained these bodies in a fraudulent way and off the scale of acceptable practice," FDA spokesman Stephen King said. However, the FDA has refused to tell the public how many patients how many people received BTS tissue or how many have ailments that might be linked to suspect tissue. "At this time the agency is not releasing any specifics of that investigation in order to preserve the integrity of that investigation," King wrote in an e-mail.
An FDA agency advisory says the "actual infectious risk is unknown."

Doctors and hospitals nationwide are warning patients at risk. Hundreds of very live Americans are walking around with pieces of the wrong dead people inside of them. In a typical letter, a Ft. Wayne neurosurgeon said, "Word has come to us from this company that the bone graft implant that was used in your case may have not been processed in accordance with required FDA and CDC requirements."

The scope of a scandal involving body parts plundered from corpses has begun to emerge, with one company alone saying it has distributed thousands of pieces of human tissue that authorities fear could be tainted with disease. Tissue distributor Medtronic says at least 8,000 pieces from Biomedical Tissue Services "were implanted and the remainder is being recalled from the field and storage,"

Biomedical Tissue Services, the now-defunct New Jersey company at the center of the scandal, supplied human bone, skin and tendons to Regeneration Technologies Inc., LifeCell Corp., Tutogen Medical Inc., Lost Mountain Tissue Bank, and the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas. These companies processed the parts, and companies like Medtronic distributed them.

"This is of great concern to us. It attacks the trust that people have in the system," said Robert Rigney, executive director of the American Association of Tissue Banks. The group accredits and inspects the 91 member tissue banks that account for most of the tissue used for transplants in the United States. Biomedical Tissue Services was not an accredited member of the American Association of Tissue Banks, nor did the company ever apply. It is unclear why processors and distributors did business with an unaccredited supplier.

If you think that you are a victim of contaminated body parts, contact us now!