I am more worried about things like this right here in the US> Mortician accused of selling body parts
By Karen Brandon
Tribune national correspondent
Published February 25, 2002
SAN DIEGO -- A Southern California funeral-home owner has been accused of illegally dissecting corpses and selling the body parts to medical researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies without the permission of family members, who believed their loved ones' remains were cremated.
Michael Francis Brown, 42, of Lake Elsinore, Calif., a town of about 30,000 residents 75 miles southeast of Los Angeles, was charged last week with 156 felony counts for the alleged mutilation of human remains and embezzlement.
Karen Gorham, Riverside County deputy district attorney, said Brown had received about $400,000 for the body parts that he sold in one year. The parts were taken from remains intended for cremation of at least 81 people, some of them indigent, she said.
Brown, who has operated a funeral home and crematorium since 1994, opened a third business, Bio-Tech Anatomical, in February 2000, to funnel tissues to research foundations from bodies that had been willed to science.
The accusation that Brown used bodies without obtaining proper consent is the latest case in Southern California to raise the specter for illegal activity in an industry that supplies human tissues for research and for-profit businesses. The suppliers are largely unregulated.
The situation contrasts sharply with procedures that govern organ donations for transplant.
Gorham said families appear to have received the cremated portions of their relatives' corpses that were not sold for research.
"We'll never know for sure," she said, "but that's what we think happened."
Five years ago, the Los Angeles County coroner's office was widely criticized for harvesting thousands of corneas from cadavers without the consent of relatives.
The practice ended after the Los Angeles Times published a story about the practice, disclosing that a tissue bank purchased the corneas from the coroner's office for about $215 a pair and sold them for up to $1,700 each, an arrangement critics said constituted a "virtual cornea mill."
The case also raises questions about what assurances families have that their wishes for the cremation of their loved ones will be followed, a concern also evoked by gruesome scenes in Noble, Ga., where investigators have found hundreds of bodies buried or stored, rather than cremated, at the Tri-State Crematory.
Lenore Gelb, a spokeswoman for the federal Food and Drug Administration, said the agency does not monitor businesses that supply tissue for medical research. The FDA in recent years has stepped up its regulation of the tissue market, but the focus has been almost exclusively aimed at eliminating any potential transmission of disease in patients that receive donated tissues transplants.
Burden placed on buyers
Richard Kagan, immediate past president of the American Association of Tissue Banks, a scientific, non-profit organization in Virginia, said that in the absence of such regulations, researchers and businesses that buy the tissue have an obligation to "check out their sources."
"I would think that they would have the duty to go to the place they are obtaining the parts," he said. "They may not feel the onus to do that, but it's the responsible thing to do.
"To me, it's kind of like buying a gold watch on the street corner of New York: Buyer beware," Kagan said.
Clients of Bio-Tech Anatomical included the Orthopedic Bioengineering Research Laboratory at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Kent Bachus, the laboratory's co-director, said it buys hips and knees to test new designs of implants before they are used in patients. It finds suppliers "by word of mouth, from other researchers," he said.
Asked how the laboratory can be assured that its suppliers obtain family consent for its cadaver parts, Bachus said, "Mostly, it's their word. As of now, we haven't had any type of assurances."
Suppliers keep confidences
He said confidentiality concerns prevent suppliers from supplying the laboratory with any information about the donor. However, he said the providers do supply documentation showing that the donor tissue has been screened for certain blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C.
In addition, he said his laboratory requires information about the donor's age, sex and cause of death. The laboratory stopped doing work with Bio-Tech Anatomical when it no longer would provide that information, he said.
Court records show that Brown had numerous financial troubles. He filed for bankruptcy in 1994, the same year his funeral and crematory businesses opened, and liens were placed on his properties because he failed to pay taxes.
Michael DiMeglio, 56, a general contractor in Murrieta, Calif., said he used Brown's cremation services in the spring of 2000, after his stepfather, Ronald King, died. DiMeglio said he paid about $1,000 to have the body cremated, according to King's directions. The ashes were to have been scattered in the Pacific Ocean, he said.
Instead, prosecutors have told him that King's body was dissected and the various parts sold.
"We are pretty distraught about it," DiMeglio said. "I was never approached about having any of this done."
He said he and his family members would have considered donating the body to science if someone had asked.
"I would have considered it for the reasons that, hopefully, it could help somebody else," he said. "But they just did it without my knowledge."
Real nice, huh?
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