UNITED STATES:A NEW Jersey dentist who ran a huge illegal racket in the body parts of human corpses faces up to 54 years in prison after admitting being the ringleader of the harvesting operation.
Michael Mastromarino (44) pleaded guilty on Tuesday to bodysnatching and reckless endangerment. He has agreed to pay back $4.6 million in profits from the racket, which will be shared among the families of up to 1,000 of its victims. The forfeit is part of a plea deal that will reduce his sentence, but the minimum he faces is 18 years.
For four years Mastromarino presided over an operation which obtained corpses from funeral homes around New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and then carved them up without the permission of loved ones. The harvested parts were supplied through his company, Biomedical Tissue Services, along with forged consent forms, to several companies trading in human donor material for transplants, which in turn shipped them to medical institutions around the world.
At least 25 hospitals in the UK are known to have taken body parts from Mastromarino's operation, and some 40 patients may have received bone graft material in that way. About 900 people affected by the racket across the US and in the UK have sued Mastromarino for civil damages.
One corpse they stole was that of the British journalist Alistair Cooke, who worked for the Guardianfrom New York for 25 years before devoting himself to his BBC series Letter from America. He died in 2004, aged 95. His paperwork was altered to make his age at death younger than it was and to disguise the cancer that killed him. Cancer sufferers are not allowed to act as donors.
Susan Kittredge, Cooke's daughter, said she was sorry Mastromarino had not gone to trial as there would be no public airing of the issue of body parts for transplants. "What got us into this problem in the first place is a cultural denial of what happens to us after we die. Throughout the world people are expecting to live longer, more active lives, but we don't stop to ask where that ligament for my knee operation came from."
Mastromarino's lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said his client had started out with a legitimate business but had become overwhelmed by the demand for his services. "He decided to cut corners and thus it became an illegal business. If he had not made these changes, instead of looking at him as a monster we'd probably be looking at him as a pioneer in the industry."
Ms Kittredge said her father would have been intrigued by the story, but horrified by Mastromarino's operation. "He was a reporter; I have no doubt he would have written about this," she said. "But . . . he hated the idea of being cut up."
- (Guardian service)