Body Snatchers

Taken from The Week Magazine, Feb 10, 2006, Vol 6, Iss 245, pg 11

Authorities recently discovered that after broadcaster Alistair Cooke died last year, his bones were stolen and sold to transplant companies. Does this sort of thing happen often?

What happened to Cooke's bones: A day after the Masterpiece Theatre host died of cancer last March, at age 95, his body was cut open at a New York City funeral home, and his bones were removed. An investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office revealed that the bones were then sold by a middleman for $7,000 to two transplant companies, which in turn may have supplied them to various hospitals. Cooke had bone cancer, but documents supplied to the hospitals claimed that the bones belonged to an 85-year-old heart attack victim and were cancer-free. Cooke's remains were subsequently cremated, and his family—unaware of the desecration—scattered his ashes in New York's Central Park, in accordance with his wishes. Family members learned about the purloined bones only a few months ago. They were shocked, but authorities weren't.

Why not: Cooke's was one of hundreds of corpses allegedly dismembered for profit by an illegal organ transplant network now the subject of a grand jury investigation. The network, which includes a New York City undertaker and a body-tissue processing company in New Jersey, is said to have harvested bones, veins, skin, and heart valves from stolen corpses, before selling them to unwitting and reputable surgical transplant firms. The body of an 82-year-old woman, exhumed as part of the investigation into Cooke, was found to be missing all bones below the waist; they had been replaced by plastic plumbing pipe. The case is just the latest in a series of body snatching scandals. Two years ago, authorities uncovered a scheme at UCLA's medical school in which officials were selling torsos, heads, and limbs for use in unregulated medical experiments. In Maine, authorities are investigating claims that human brains from the state's medical examiner's office were sold to research facilities without family consent.

Why is the trade in corpses so robust: Market demand in the U.S. for body parts is wide-ranging, encompassing everything from pure research, to skin and bone grafts, to cosmetic surgery, to penis enlargement. Demand has risen dramatically, thanks to better anti-rejection drugs and advances in transplant technology. Human bones, for instance, are used in 400,000 grafts a year. Bones and bone splinters from corpses are used to treat accident victims, correct deformities, and replace bone destroyed or removed because of cancer. Human bone is also ground into cement for orthopedic operations and used as dental filler.

Is any of this trade legal: It's illegal in the U.S. to profit from trade in body parts. But regulation of the industry is light and companies can still earn money charging for the collection, preservation, and transport of cadavers. That forms the foundation of an entire cadaver-based economy involving undertakers, hospices, research companies, and body banks. Undertakers will often offer a free funeral in exchange for the right to use body parts for research. Some air-freight firms specialize in the shipment of human limbs. One company charges $1,000 or more to ship a complete torso, $550 for a head, $500 for a brain, $350 for a foot, and $15 for a fingernail. Officially, the trade is supposed to rely on people consenting to donate body parts after death, but the growing gap between supply and demand creates huge incentives for unscrupulous operators to make a buck. U.S. law enforcement agencies say that as much as $500 million in illegal bone sales take place every year.

Is this just an American phenomenon: Far from it. Last year, a lab manager in the United Kingdom, where 10,000 bone transplants take place annually, was jailed for 10 months for stealing bones from a freezer at a Yorkshire hospital and selling them for $21,000. Across Western Europe, 40,000 patients await kidney transplants, 15 percent to 30 percent of whom will die while on the waiting list. The average wait is three years; by 2010 that will rise to 10 years. So increasingly desperate people are resorting to increasingly desperate measures.

What sort of desperate measures: In destitute Moldova, hundreds of people are mortgaging their bodies, many willing to part with a kidney for just a few thousand dollars. That same kidney could fetch more than $150,000 in the West or the Middle East. India, before it passed laws to ban the practice, was known as the "great organs bazaar," but it has now been overtaken by China as the biggest supplier of kidneys to foreign patients. Whereas India's organs come mostly from live donors, China's come from condemned prisoners who have been shot dead through the skull to avoid damaging the organs. Amnesty International reported in 1996 that 90 percent of all transplanted organs in China came from executed prisoners.

How do people find available organs: There are several established networks in the illegal sale of kidneys. Israeli patients fly to Turkey, where they're matched with kidney sellers from Moldova. Brokers in New York focus on Russian immigrants. Rich Palestinians find organs in Iraq. The Internet has made a huge difference. In 1999, bids for a human kidney hit $5.7 million on eBay, before the company shut down the sale. "Only one for sale," read the ad, "as I need the other to live. Serious bids only." The irrepressible nature of demand has led some to suggest ways of making the trade legal. Some medical societies have proposed a "futures market" in organs: Patients could leave instructions in wills for their organs to be sold for transplants, with the cash going to a named beneficiary. "Our current organ procurement system relies solely on altruism to motivate donation," said economist Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University. "Altruism is a fine thing, but it is in short supply. We may hope for love, but can plan on self-interest."