*Oregon: *On July 20, a Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship departed Charleston,South Carolina carrying thousands of containers. One of them held alucrative commodity: body parts from dozens of dead Americans.
According to the manifest, the shipment bound for Europe included about6,000 pounds of human remains valued at $67,204. To keep the merchandisefrom spoiling, the container’s temperature was set to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The body parts came from a Portland business called MedCure Inc. Aso-called body broker, MedCure profits by dissecting the bodies ofaltruistic donors and sending the parts to medical training and researchcompanies.
MedCure sells or leases about 10,000 body parts from US donors annually,shipping about 20 percent of them overseas, internal corporate and manifestrecords show. In addition to bulk cargo shipments to the Netherlands, whereMedCure operates a distribution hub, the Oregon company has exported bodyparts to at least 22 other countries by plane or truck, the records show.
Among the parts: a pelvis and legs to a university in Malaysia; feet tomedical device companies in Brazil and Turkey; and heads to hospitals inSlovenia and the United Arab Emirates.
Demand for body parts from America – torsos, knees and heads – is high incountries where religious traditions or laws prohibit the dissection of thedead. Unlike many developed nations, the United States largely does notregulate the sale of donated body parts, allowing entrepreneurs such asMedCure to expand exports rapidly during the last decade.
No other nation has an industry that can provide as convenient and reliablea supply of body parts.
Since 2008, Reuters found, US body brokers have exported parts to at least45 countries, including Italy, Israel, Mexico, China, Venezuela and SaudiArabia. Whole bodies are studied at Caribbean-based medical schools.Plastic surgeons in Germany use heads from dead Americans to practice newtechniques. Thousands of parts are shipped overseas annually; a precisenumber cannot be calculated because no agency tracks industry exports.
Most donor consent forms, including those from MedCure, authorize brokersto dissect bodies and ship parts internationally. Even so, some relativesof the dead said they did not realize that the remains of a loved one mightbe dismembered and sent to the far reaches of the globe.
“There are people who wouldn’t necessarily mind where the specimens weresent if they were fully informed,” said Brandi Schmitt, who directs theUniversity of California system’s anatomical donation program. “But clearlythere are plenty of donors that do mind and that don’t feel like they’regetting enough information.”
MedCure shipments are now the subject of a federal investigation. InNovember, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the company’s Portlandheadquarters. Though the search warrant remains sealed, people familiarwith the matter say it relates in part to overseas shipping.
MedCure is cooperating with the investigation, said its lawyer, JeffreyEdelson. He declined to comment on the FBI raid, but said: “MedCure iscommitted to meeting and exceeding the highest standards in the industry.It takes very seriously its obligation to not only deliver safe specimenssecurely, but to do it in a way that respects the donors.”
Edelson also said MedCure “partners with government and industry agenciesto follow and exceed requirements for shipping human tissue,” and that”shipping handlers, drivers and carriers are specially trained for the safehandling and transportation of human specimens.”
*INFECTED PARTS AT THE BORDER*
As a Reuters series last year revealed, the body donation industry is solightly regulated in the United States that almost anyone can legally buy,sell or lease body parts.
Although no federal law expressly regulates the body trade, there is onesituation in which the U.S. government does exercise oversight: when bodyparts leave or enter the country. Border agents have the authority toensure that the parts are not infected with contagious diseases and areproperly shipped.
This authority played a leading role in the government securing aconviction last month of Detroit broker Arthur Rathburn, who stored bodyparts in grisly, unsanitary conditions, according to trial testimony. TheFBI began to focus intently on Rathburn’s business, InternationalBiological Inc, after repeated border stops in which he was found ferryinghuman heads, court records show.
The jury found that Rathburn defrauded customers by supplying body partsinfected with HIV and hepatitis.
“The fraud scheme orchestrated by IBI shocked even the most experienced ofour investigative team,” said FBI special-agent-in-charge David Gelios.Even in death, Gelios said in a statement after the verdict, donors were”victimized as IBI intentionally and recklessly marketed and transportedcontaminated human remains… Personal greed overcame decency.”
Rathburn was also convicted of transporting hazardous materials – the headof someone who had died of bacterial sepsis and aspiration pneumonia. Thetransportation conviction underscored the U.S. government’s growing concernabout shipments of body parts that might endanger public health, officialssaid.
Martin Cetron, director of Global Migration and Quarantine for the Centersof Disease Control and Prevention, said that when brokers dissect a bodythat is infected, there is added risk of transferring that disease toanyone who handles the parts.
“In the case of saws (used) to cut bones or limbs, there may be additionalprocedures that could potentially turn a fluid into an aerosol that couldbe inhaled and be communicable,” Cetron said.
A Reuters review of government records shows that border agents interceptedbody parts suspected to be infected at least 75 times between 2008 and2017. Border agents pay more attention to goods entering the country thanthose departing, and virtually all of the intercepted shipments wereremains of American donors whose body parts were being returned to UnitedStates. Typically, body parts are returned to America for three reasons: tocomply with foreign laws on final disposition; when cremation is notavailable in the foreign country; or when a U.S. broker intends to reusethe parts.
In 2016 and 2017, for example, federal agents stopped shipments beingreturned to MedCure at the border, law enforcement records show. The bodyparts they stopped included torsos carrying infectious biological agentsthat cause sepsis, a body’s extreme response to infection. At least onecarried the life-threatening MRSA bacteria, the records show.
For more than a year, records show, US officials and some body brokers havedisagreed over whether the presence of sepsis in a corpse – without furtherinformation about a person’s cause of death -poses enough of a risk towarrant special packaging and warning labels.
“Sepsis itself is not a disease diagnosis but it raises a red flag,” saidCetron, the CDC official. The pathogen that caused sepsis, he said, “couldbe a bacteria, could be Ebola, could be salmonella, could be E coli.”That’s why further documentation, including a death certificate, mustaccompany any body part imported into the United States, he said.
The CDC has an exemption intended to allow for shipping blood and other labtesting samples. Reuters found dozens of examples of brokers labelingcustoms manifests and packages with a version of the term “exempt humanspecimen” to ship body parts.
“I think that’s a deceptive practice,” Cetron said. “If they are humanremains, part or in whole – heads, arms, limbs, etc. – they are notexempted.”
Several brokers said the government should clarify the rules – whether theCDC’s or those of other regulatory entities. They cited, for example, aU.S. Department of Transportation regulation that, they believe, exemptsbody parts. Transportation officials declined to comment on theirregulations.
Alyssa Harrison, executive director of Oklahoma-based broker United TissueNetwork, said most in her industry want to follow the law. But, she added,”there are many guidelines that are unclear and or contradictory to otherdepartment’s regulations.”
The disconnect between what the industry and government believe isdangerous, and what precautions are required by law, should be resolved,said Matthew Zahn, chairman of the public health committee for theInfectious Diseases Society of America, a group that represents doctors,researchers and other health professionals.
“It’s a situation where we don’t have a huge amount of regulation orclarity as to what the risks are,” Zahn said. “It feels like one of thosecracks in the system where a practice has developed and the risk factorsand oversight have not fully matured.”