MONDAY, MARCH 22, 2004
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET
By ALAN ABELSON
Cadavers, Anyone?
UCLA.
All the time we thought that stood for University of California at Los Angeles. Just shows you how out of it we are. For what those familiar set of letters really stands for is: Unlimited Corpses, Lease or Acquire.
The university's medical school, so the story goes, has a Willed Body Program, which encourages folks when they bid adieu to this vale of tears and settle in for their eternal rest to consign their mortal remains to the furthering of medical knowledge and the betterment of humankind.
Alas, it turns out those cadavers so charitably willed by their former occupants provided rather a comfy living, as it were, for a couple of necrophilic entrepreneurs. It was in all respects a skeletal operation, involving a couple of people with a pulse and access to a constantly replenished store of inert bodies. The enterprising twosome consisted of what might be called the disassembler, who sliced off a hand here, an ankle there, and packaged them for future delivery, and the supplier, who ran the Willed Body Donor Program. Both seemed to have turned a pretty profit from their grave endeavors.
An undisturbed corpse might fetch $1,400 on the open market, while certain coveted parts (don't ask us why they're coveted or, for that matter, who covets them) go for a significant multiple of that sum. According to that eminent medical journal, Time Magazine, a heart valve can bring more than $9,000, knee cartilage $14,000. One of those cases, obviously, as is true for many corporate entities -- Walt Disney a prominent example -- where the parts are worth more than the whole.
What surprises us is that it's still a mom-and-pop business. Given the apparently healthy margins, the assured supply and the ease of entry, you'd imagine that Wall Street, always alert to new growth opportunities, would have tapped into the cadaver trade by now. A Morgan Stanley or a Goldman Sachs or any of the other Street stalwarts, all of which have some experience with mortality as the cause of countless investors being carried out during the bear market, could infuse vital financial and organizational savvy into a nascent cadaver company and, of course, shepherd it to public ownership.
In particular, it strikes us the Street's legendary innovativeness could come smartly into play in integrating the corpse dealer's operations and expanding its marketing reach. On the first score, vertical integration to ensure a reliable and less costly stream of supply seems a natural, say by acquiring some second-rate hospital chains, many of which over the years have been brought public by just such investment firms.
As to opening up new markets, even a midlevel Wall Street whiz could spot the potential demand for body parts or full cadavers beyond the current narrow confines of medical need. Lush possibilities include entertainment (the reality shows would really take to them); political rallies (to occupy the half-empty auditoriums; the obvious risk, but not an insoluble one, would be the eerie likeness of such stolid fill-ins to the principal speakers); conceivably, even mundane domestic uses, which we're certain those devilishly inventive investment types can unearth.
We're the first to admit that the speculative cognoscenti at the moment aren't dying to buy the IPOs of outfits specializing in corpses and their various and sundry parts. But that can be easily remedied by the underwriters craftily plugging into those themes that currently fire up the racy set -- a China connection, perhaps (the cadavers are fresh off the boat from Guangdong) or a link with Internet search engines (maybe the mere fact that so many of these outfits themselves are destined to go belly up).
All of this may seem a bit fanciful for your taste. But, hey, that's what manias are all about. And we'd just hate for you to be taken by utter surprise when Organs.com or Legs 'R' Us goes public. |
