How to halt invasion of the body-snatchers

Mar 17 2008 by Sarah Miloudi, Western Mail

EVERYONE should donate their bodies to medical science after they die to wipe out multi-million- pound criminal body-snatching rings which illegally sold human tissue from corpses to three Welsh hospitals, it was claimed yesterday.

Delwyn Herridge, who received spinal parts taken illegally from foreign corpses, said that if most UK residents donated their bodies and organs after death, the criminal gang which sold body parts to the hospitals could have been stopped.

Mr Herridge, 40, from Ebbw Vale, unknowingly received an illegally-sourced bone graft in 2005 after being left paralysed following an accident at work.

The former builder was one of 15 patients in England and Wales to receive the parts. He said there would have been “no need” for criminals to steal the bones had more people donated their bodies to medicine.

Mr Herridge, now unemployed, said, “When my time comes, my body will be donated to science, or to wherever it is needed to help improve someone else’s life.

“I agree that some people should be allowed to opt out, but if donation was compulsory, this could have been stopped.”

The father-of-three received the graft following an operation at Llandough Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan. The hospital was one of 25 in Britain to receive bones and tissue stolen by former dentist, Michael Mastromarino, including the private Bupa Hospital and the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

The hospitals received the parts from Swindon-based company, Plus Orthopaedics, which was unaware Mastromarino had illegally removed parts from approximately 1,000 corpses in America.

Major advances in medicine over the past two decades have made transplants from deceased donors possible. However, with too few donors available, the demand for human tissue and bone has led and caused some funeral parlours to sell corpses on the black market for up to £125,000.

The body of broadcaster, Alistair Cooke was one of those stolen. His daughter, Susan Kittredge, said a greater number of donors could put an end to the illegal trade.

As part of a BBC Horizon programme to be aired tomorrow, Ms Kittredge said, “You could thwart this whole crime by having everyone donate their bodies.

“It would shut it down, I think, right away. If you flood the market there will be no demand, the price (for body parts) will drop way down and there will be no profit to be made.”

Ms Kittredge added that at present, the public was unwilling to debate the issue due to its gruesome nature, but warned it needed to be addressed to eliminate the body-snatching trade.

She said, “People know it is going on but no one wants to talk about it, just as people know they are going to die but do not really want to talk about it. Society has to recognise we need the tissue (from dead bodies), but currently we want someone else to donate it.”

Her father presented BBC radio’s Letter from America for 50 years. He died in 2004 from lung cancer, aged 95.

Eighteen months later it emerged his bones had been sold for £5,500 for use in transplants, although Ms Kittredge was assured they were never given to patients. Mr Cooke’s body was one of more than 1,000 taken from funeral homes between 2001 and 2005, surgically dissected and sold by Mastromarino.

The gang operated in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and made ringleader Mastromarino a millionaire, before he was exposed.

Mastromarino is awaiting sentence in the US after admitting paying funeral homes £500 for each corpse and forging next-of-kin consent forms for the bodies to be released.

In the UK and the US, less than 1% of people donate their bodies to medical science or to be used in transplants.

Patients in Wales can wait up to a decade to receive organs such as kidneys.

Both the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Wales’ Heath Minister, Edwina Hart, want organ donation to become compulsory, and a consultation on presumed consent will take place in the National Assembly for Wales this spring.

Horizon will be broadcast on BBC2 Wales at 11.20pm tomorrow