Human corpses harvested in multimillion-dollar trade
Source: smh.com.au
A grisly trade in human body parts leaves relatives grieving and some recipients at risk of life-threatening disease.On February 24, Ukrainian authorities made an alarming discovery: bones and other human tissues crammed into coolers in a grimy white minibus.
Investigators grew even more intrigued when they found, amid the body parts, envelopes stuffed with cash and autopsy results written in English.
What the security service had disrupted was not the work of a serial killer but part of an international pipeline of ingredients for medical and dental products that are routinely implanted into people around the world.
“Two ribs, two Achilles heels, two elbows, two eardrums, two teeth, and so on’’ ... a relative holds a picture of Oleksandr Frolov, some of whose body parts were found during a raid by Ukrainian authorities.
The seized documents suggested that the remains of dead Ukrainians were destined for a factory in Germany belonging to the subsidiary of a US medical products company, Florida-based RTI Biologics.
RTI is one of a growing industry of companies that make profits by turning mortal remains into everything from dental implants to bladder slings to wrinkle cures. The industry has flourished even as its practices have roused concerns about how tissues are obtained and how well grieving families and transplant patients are informed about the realities and risks of the business.
In the US alone, the biggest market and the biggest supplier, an estimated two million products derived from human tissue are sold each year, a figure that has doubled over the past decade.
It is an industry that promotes treatments and products that literally allow the blind to see (through cornea transplants) and the lame to walk (by recycling tendons and ligaments for use in knee repairs). It’s also an industry fuelled by powerful appetites for bottom-line profits and fresh human bodies.
 ’’I was in shock’’ ... Kateryna Rahulina says she did not give permission for the body of her mother Olha to be harvested. |
Industry officials argue that such alleged abuses are rare, and that the industry operates safely and responsibly.
For its part, RTI didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment or to a detailed list of questions provided a month before this publication.
In public statements the company says it “honours the gift of tissue donation by treating the tissue with respect, by finding new ways to use the tissue to help patients and by helping as many patients as possible from each donation".
’Our misfortune’
Despite its growth, the tissue trade has largely escaped public scrutiny. This is thanks in part to less-than-aggressive official oversight — and to popular appeal for the idea of allowing the dead to help the living survive and thrive.
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Read the full article at: smh.com.au
