You want a truly ghoulish conspiracy story? Here's one: "Chop shops" are dealing in human body parts. The problem has been growing for some years, although this blog has never discussed it heretofore...While it will be difficult to prove with certainty, many people are claiming to have been infected with potentially deadly viruses from contaminated body parts and human tissue illegally harvested from bodies and then marketed for implantation and grafting into unsuspecting patients.The diseases include AIDS, syphillis, and hepatitis. It gets worse...
The billion dollar body-part industry provided irresistible temptation to a group of unscrupulous criminals who bypassed all of the safety procedures in order to flood the market with potentially contaminated human tissue. Forged consents from family members, bogus documentation, and no regard for the cause of death of people who may have had serious or even fatal diseases, has placed an enormous number of people at risk.Funeral homes across the country have been involved. And the story gets even worse...
Among the unspeakable horrors linked to this trafficking was the kidnapping of homeless children (for their transplantable tissues and organs) along the border between the U.S. and Mexico and the forced removal of organs from prisoners in third-world countries for sale in the U.S.(Emphasis added) Turns out UCLA was a center of this activty...
At that time, there had been numerous reports of homeless persons vanishing from the downtown Los Angeles “Skid Row” area located close to UCLA. There had been unexplained disappearances of UCLA students as well. One of those students was 18-year-old freshman, Michael Negrete, who vanished from his dormitory on December 10, 1999, and has never been found.Actually, Skid Row is about 15 miles away, which I suppose is close enough for discomfort. And then we have this:
Bones and body parts were replaced with everything from broomsticks and pipes to plumbing supplies. It is even being alleged that body parts from British actor and host of Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke were stolen and sold to BioMedical.(Ephasis added.) By now you must be thinking: Yes, yes...this is all very droll, but where's the Bush connection? There's gotta be a Bush connection...
Happy to provide.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Remember funeralgate? This was the scandal that threatened Bush's presidency before it began; the details are here and here. To summarize:
In 1999, Eliza May -- executive director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission -- was hot on the trail of SCI (Service Corp. International), the world's largest funeral company, based in Houston. May believed that SCI had committed grave acts (so to speak) against their clients.
But the head of SCI, Robert Waltrip, was a close friend to the Bush family and a big contributor. Waltrip called on Joseph Albaugh (then a key aide to then-governor Bush; Albaugh later ran FEMA) , and asked for help. According to one report published in Newsweek, Bush himself was present during a meeting with Albaugh, Waltrip and an SCI lawyer.
A short while later, investigator May was fired. She sued for wrongful termination and eventually won $210,000.
As we noted above, funeral homes across the country have been linked to the body parts scandal. SCI controls a large proportion of that trade.
And just what sort of activities aroused the interest of Eliza May and others? Consumer Justice Attorneys Ricci-Leopold have a few words to say on that score:
The civil suit, now on behalf of 50 families states a number of claims against Menorah Gardens/Service Corporation International which include secretly breaking and opening burial vaults and dumping remains in a wooded area where the remains may have been consumed by wild animals; burying remains in locations other than those purchased by plaintiffs; crushing burial vaults in order to make room for other vaults; burying remains on top of the other rather than side-by-side; secretly digging up and removing remains; secretly burying remains head-to-foot rather than side-by-side; secretly mixing body parts and remains from different individuals; secretly allowing plots owned by one part to be occupied by a different person; secretly selling plots in rows where there were more graves assigned than the rows could accommodate; secretly allowed graves to encroach on other plots; secretly sold plots so narrow that the plots could not accommodate standard burial vaults; secretly participated in the desecration of gravesites and markers and failed to exercise reasonable care in handling the plaintiff's loved ones remains.(Emphasis added.) Secretly mixing body parts and remains from different individuals...? In light of the nationwide "chop shop" scandal, that phrase must give us pause.
Please understand that I am not directly accusing SCI of participating in the "billion dollar" trade in body parts. I am simply asking one question: What other motive can a funeral home have for "divvying up" human remains?
Pass this story around. Investigators need to determine if our "Christian" president helped to protect individuals connected with this nation's sickest crime ring.
9 comments:
eeyeuw. oh, eeeyueeeuuuw.
one has to wonder just why there would be body parts to get mixed up in the first place if the body was originally in one piece.
the disappearing youths is exceptionally troubling.
and where did sci come up again more recently? weren't they the questionable company that was given the job of collecting all the bodies in nola after katrina??
bound to be a helluva story there!
These people aren't Christians... they're souless parasites that mask themselves as Christians so they can suck all of the money out of your pockets.
Won't end until we take the $$$ out of transplants.
actually, the 1984 law established that no one can profit from trafficking in human body parts; it's on the books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplant
the problem is, it's not enforced, and it's clearly difficult to do so. but not impossible, of course. remember all the contaminated blood before screening? regulations will go a long way toward cleaning the worst of this up, but it will have to be enforced.
if you think about it, the whole process of transplants is itself a little bit creepy. is nothing sacred anymore?
there is money to be paid and made at the receiver end of the process, though, and that's where the temptation trail begins.
so i'd say, it won't end until we take the fear of death out of life. which, i believe, was likely the most powerful message one jesus of nazareth had to offer.
Of course you know our old friend HarryWhittington is currently head of the Texas Funeral Service Commission.
Thanks again for going after an issue like this, Joseph. Like your post about the evils of commercially manufactured pet food, this is nastiness that as many people as possible need to get informed about, yet remain all too tragically oblivious to. Hey, do you feel like getting into America's tainted blood supply next? The collection and distribution of blood contaminated with incurable, contagious diseases (Hep B, C, HIV, etc.) continues in this country despite repeated bouts of public outrage. Howzabout the scary shit that goes down with regard to organ donation issues in this great nation? I can't think of a Bush link offhand, but maybe you can do it for the general benefit of your readers.
I can think of two ways you get mixing of body parts.
One thing that frequently happens (frequent as in something that gets funeral homes in trouble rather than a widespread practise) is incomplete cremation. Burning a body requires a lot of energy sometimes a funeral home will run their ovens at a lower temperature to save money. This leads to incomplete cremations, so you can have parts left over. You can also do a two for one by putting two bodies in the oven at the same time. Of course you can not tell who's bones and ashes are who's so they just divide them into equal piles or not (Particularly if the body is a John Doe).
Another way you mix body parts is when someone has an amputation, but, for religious reasons (e.g. orthodox jews) needs to have tha part buried with them. They pay a funeral home to keep the limb in a freezer until they die which may be many years later. Sometimes those parts get lost and they substitute another organ.
Jen,
the blood problem isn't a problem. Blood banks are so tightly regulated by the FDA (yep the food guys) that this doesn't really happen in the domestic blood supply. Now not everyone collecting blood in the US is doing so for use by the US. Most states do not allow their hospitals to use blood from 'paid' donors. However, if you are collecting for 'export' the rules belong to wherever the blood is going. Most of these for profits lie about where their blood is going too. It is hard enough to get people to donate for their local community.
The US blood supply is very safe compared to other contries. Units all get tested for hepatitis and HIV. You have to maintain meticulous records going back many years so that you can precisely tract anything given by any donor to who recieved it. You won't find an industry more tightly regulated and supervised than the US blood system.
in trying to find poop on the whole body part trafficking business, and i ran across this link:
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/healthcare/organs/main.html
seems an anarcho-capitalist (self-proclaimed) out there is trying to show that more people would be serviced with the body parts and organs they need if only, if only, the business were not so regulated.
that 1984 law i mentioned earlier restricts anyone from profiting from this business, which is - one presumes - the restriction this person dislikes.
now, i don't know about you, but watching how the possibility for profit tends to make all the wrong guys salivate while their eyes turn all beady and red and dark and they commit all manner of despicable crimes - this story potentially the creepiest case in point - i want to know just how anyone with any resemblance to human could actually suggest that injecting unregulated profiting into the mix is gonna be a good thing?
this whole thing gives me the creeps.
Look, not assigned to the conspiracy forum like the outstanding Zarquqri piece.
You're hot. Wilkes is playing out before our eyes in the nation's capitol. The 15 members of an "appropriating committee" who apparently got their ashes hauled at the Watergate will have the Wilkeks stench, no doubt.
No hear this, CannonFire is on DU, this story. Leading with Wiki is apparently the trick. Remember that in the future
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2605966
Very nice work. This one will be all about NOLA, the * crews favorite playground for odd and financially rewarding behavior, beyond our wildest dreams (but you've captured the nightmare).
USAToday actually covered illegally harvested body parts. While it is illegal for organs and tissues to be sold fees ARE charged for other things-
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-04-26-body-parts-cover-usat_x.htm
While federal law prohibits most sales of body parts, it is legal to charge fees for handling, procuring, storing and processing human tissue. Thus an entire body, parceled out and delivered to the highest bidder, can fetch from $5,000 to tens of thousands of dollars in so-called processing fees — creating a powerful incentive for illegal sales.
Modern-day body snatchers provide bones, tendons and body parts other than transplantable organs to tissue banks, research facilities and other buyers. What they get paid: $600 for a brain, as much as $850 for an elbow, up to $850 for a hand, according to an analysis of market prices for fresh or frozen body parts used for research and education that was compiled by Annie Cheney, author of Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains.
Demand for tissue is growing. More than 19,000 square feet of skin were distributed in 2003 for transplant from accredited tissue banks, according to the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB), up from 7,700 square feet in 1999. About 3,300 heart valves were distributed in 2003, up from 1,300 in 1999. Tumors and excess tissue that were once incinerated as waste can now be probed for DNA markers to help doctors understand disease.
Bodies and tissue can also be a boon in education. Fresh corpses, which are more lifelike than "rubbery" embalmed skin, are used to teach doctors to perform laparoscopic surgery, which involves making small incisions to insert scopes and other tools during surgery. Torsos can be used by anesthesiologists learning to insert needles for painkillers.
Tissue banks or others that "buy" material such as skin and bones from these body brokers often don't know the parts are stolen. They then provide the purloined tissue for research — or, in one case now under investigation, for implantation in living patients.
But it's a risky business: Stolen body parts that are implanted in humans can potentially expose recipients to HIV, hepatitis and syphilis, according to the FDA, although the risk of a recipient contracting these diseases is small.
this reminds me of how doctors a few hundred years or so ago weren't too picky where they got the cadavers for practicing upon. people were killed and delivered still warm to the university. Families would keep watch over graves to make sure newly buried relations were dug up by grave robbers trying to make some quick money.
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