The Local Windy City Rag wrote:
Soon after Don Whelpley read a Tribune report Thursday morning about suspect donor tissue that reached Chicago-area patients, he opened a registered letter with disturbing news from his oral surgeon: Some of the bad bone tissue had been used in Whelpley's gums.
The letter recommended that Whelpley, a 57-year-old Naperville grandfather who has been married 37 years, be tested for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis.
It is the kind of scene being repeated around the region and the country, as hospitals and doctors' offices are informing patients that the tissue in their bone or tendon grafts might not have been properly screened.
Most of the major medical centers in and around Chicago are affected, including at least 10 hospitals and 62 patients who received the grafts. The tissue came from a New York operation suspected by state and federal officials of using looted cadavers and phony documents that hid the donors' medical conditions.
That apparent deception is rippling through the medical community, bringing new grief to bereaved families and shock to many tissue recipients. Investigators believe one victim of tissue looting was late public television host Alistair Cooke, whose daughter said Thursday in an interview that the thought of his corpse being violated was "ghoulish and *****************
[...]
Six patients at Rush University Medical Center received bone used for spinal fusion operations, a spokeswoman said. At Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, five patients had tendon grafts from the suspect source. Three University of Chicago Hospitals patients got a fibrous tissue called fascia, used in abdominal surgery.
[...]
Cooke's daughter, Rev. Susan Cooke Kittredge, 56, said her father's tissue might have been easier to steal because he died at his home in Manhattan and was sent to a funeral home for cremation. That effectively removed the web of documentation and oversight that accompanies corpses in a hospital or medical examiner's office.
Kittredge said the district attorney's office in Brooklyn called her in mid-December to say that her father's corpse had been used in a tissue-looting scheme linked to a New Jersey-based company, Biomedical Tissue Services. Officials from the district attorney's office would not comment on her story.
"They said they'd found receipts for Daddy's bones," said Kittredge, an ordained minister from Vermont.
"When someone tells you something like that, it doesn't compute," she said. "I hung up the telephone and stared slack-jawed."
The letter recommended that Whelpley, a 57-year-old Naperville grandfather who has been married 37 years, be tested for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis.
It is the kind of scene being repeated around the region and the country, as hospitals and doctors' offices are informing patients that the tissue in their bone or tendon grafts might not have been properly screened.
Most of the major medical centers in and around Chicago are affected, including at least 10 hospitals and 62 patients who received the grafts. The tissue came from a New York operation suspected by state and federal officials of using looted cadavers and phony documents that hid the donors' medical conditions.
That apparent deception is rippling through the medical community, bringing new grief to bereaved families and shock to many tissue recipients. Investigators believe one victim of tissue looting was late public television host Alistair Cooke, whose daughter said Thursday in an interview that the thought of his corpse being violated was "ghoulish and *****************
[...]
Six patients at Rush University Medical Center received bone used for spinal fusion operations, a spokeswoman said. At Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, five patients had tendon grafts from the suspect source. Three University of Chicago Hospitals patients got a fibrous tissue called fascia, used in abdominal surgery.
[...]
Cooke's daughter, Rev. Susan Cooke Kittredge, 56, said her father's tissue might have been easier to steal because he died at his home in Manhattan and was sent to a funeral home for cremation. That effectively removed the web of documentation and oversight that accompanies corpses in a hospital or medical examiner's office.
Kittredge said the district attorney's office in Brooklyn called her in mid-December to say that her father's corpse had been used in a tissue-looting scheme linked to a New Jersey-based company, Biomedical Tissue Services. Officials from the district attorney's office would not comment on her story.
"They said they'd found receipts for Daddy's bones," said Kittredge, an ordained minister from Vermont.
"When someone tells you something like that, it doesn't compute," she said. "I hung up the telephone and stared slack-jawed."
[:heebie-jeebies:]
