“Letter From America”…
Arms and legs from Britain??
NEW YORK (AP) — After “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke died, errors in the medical records accompanying his body fell through the cracks, one by one.
His name was misspelled. His birthdate was off by 10 years. His Social Security number wasn’t even close. The name of his doctor, contact information for a relative, the time and cause of his death: all wrong.
None of that prevented the removal and sale of the 95-year-old’s arms and legs. The fate of his pelvis and other tissue remains a mystery.
It’s amazing the errors/deceipts/frauds this case has highlighted in the cadaver biz:
…Where Kittredge’s name might have appeared on the records, there is instead a bogus name and phone number for a family member who supposedly agreed to donate her father’s body parts for tissue transplants.
Donated cadaver tissue is used in more than a million procedures a year in the United States to repair bad backs, fix ailing knees and replace heart valves. Most of these operations are safe and do tremendous good, but tissue that has not been treated properly or is taken from unscreened donors can infect a patient with hepatitis, HIV and other potentially deadly infections.
…The documents say that a person named “Susan Quint” of the Bronx — identified as Cooke’s daughter — consented to giving BTS the body parts. But Kittredge is Cooke’s only daughter, and she lives in Vermont, where she is a minister.
In addition, Cooke died of lung cancer, but the records list his cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest.” He was 95. BTS said he was 85.
The FDA sets no age and few health limits on donors, but some tissue banks consider cancer a disqualifying condition. It’s not known whether the disease can spread to a recipient.
The time the body was recovered was also fudged. Cooke died just after midnight March 30, 2004, but BTS lists it as 6:45 a.m. making the 9:30 p.m. recovery time look shorter and the body fresher and more suitable for processing.
Do you really want parts from a 95 year old guy who died of cancer implanted in to you?
Morality | Mr. Bingley | 
September 19, 2006 8:38 am
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Oh, this is going to be a case in torts law school books soon!
Some people’ll do anything to get a leg up in the business.
I know one place whose chili I’m avoiding…