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Who Owns Your Body Parts?
Everyone's making money in the market for body tissue -- except the donors.
(Page 11 of 11)
Beyond the visceral revulsion at Michael Mastromarino's ghoulish raids lies a bigger and more important story, one that offends on another level. The tissue trade in its current form violates basic ideas of fair play, free exchange, equity, and honesty. These are wrongs at which our sense of repugnance has not diminished.
The Mastromarino scandal continues to unfold. In October 2006, Brooklyn prosecutors issued yet another indictment, accusing Mastromarino of enterprise corruption. Two Philadelphia funeral homes were forced to close, and seven New York funeral directors pled guilty to related charges. A raft of post-transplant patients filed lawsuits, with others as far as Britain threatening to pile on.
Mastromarino, out on $1.5 million in bail, is looking at a possible 25 years in prison. Meanwhile, LifeCell is set to report its most profitable year ever.
Kerry Howley is an associate editor of Reason.
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Xiomara Ortega|3.28.10 @ 11:27PM|#
I will donate my entire body, also the story I saw on TV made me feel very angry about these body snatchers this type of greed is disgusting, these people they don't have mercy, feeling,and most of all compassion for the decease one and the family behind.
Michael M.|8.9.10 @ 3:04PM|#
I love the article. I understand that this is one case that you hilight but have you ever given thought to newborn body rights and how doctors/nurses, etc., try to get parents to sign away another human being's body parts? Each year over 6 million baby boys are robbed of their foreskins and they weren't even asked! Medical practitioners ask the parents who are not owners of the body. This goes against all medical ethics and the philosophy of "do no harm." Many hospitals do exactly what you've outlined in the above article and sell those foreskins to companies to morph them into anti-aging beauty products. Yes, the same company that sells TNS Recovery Complex is getting ladies all over the world to rub a little foreskin on their faces. The family does not profit from the sale let alone the true owner of that body part: the newborn baby boy. You know what is worse? It is paid for by tax dollars in some states.
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thanks