Numerous individuals from funeral homes, hospitals and medical companies in Philadelphia and surrounding cities have been charged with stealing body parts from dead people and selling them.
Authorities say a now-closed biomedical organization in New Jersey purchased the parts from funeral homes and resold them to medical companies and hospitals. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, the tissue, some of which was infected with cancer, HIV, hepatitis and other diseases, was then transplanted without the patients' knowledge.
Authorities have charged that parts were stolen from more than a thousand bodies. Hundreds of lawsuits are pending for the families of those patients who received the diseased tissue.
“This horrendous story is an example of what happens when greed trumps ethics,” said Dawn Vargo, associate bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family Action. "These unscrupulous people have put countless people at risk for death and disease by selling unsanitary and disease-ridden body parts to hospitals that allowed these parts to be implanted in patients. This represents a breakdown in law, process and ethics. Hopefully, exposing this black-market scheme will prevent it from being attempted elsewhere."
