OK. It’s terrible that this happened to anyone’s loved one.
Officials probe reports that Alistair Cooke’s bones were sold
But, Alistair Cooke? You’ve defiled the body of one of the few non-Americans who tried to explain America to the rest of the world.
That’s just fucking low. If I get the chance, I’ll shit on your grave.
It’s fucking low that they’ve apparently defiled scores of other bodies as well. What price humanity? Apparently around $500 a corpse. Despicable. :mad:
Ghastly!
However, if this has been an ongoing problem, stealing an obscure celebrities remains could have a positive result. Perhaps the celebrity-induced increased attention will result in additional law enforcement resource being brought to bear on the problem. The light of publicity could help to eliminate this nasty practice.
Still, it sucks for Cooke’s family.
I was gonna come in and make a “masterpiece” joke, but then I decided it’d be gauche.
Ghouls, all of them.
Can a 95 year old’s tissue (or even that of an 85 year old which they claimed he was) really be of much use in transplants?
Of course I was doubly shocked because I didn’t realize Alistaire Cooke was dead. In fact, I was kind of relieved to know it once I learned his bones had been stolen and sold.
Not much, I’d think. But they lie about how the people died as well on the forged documents. And by the time folk find out it does no good for them – how can they trace anything back? A smooth scheme.
I wouldn’t think so, but no doubt medical education supply houses could use the parts. Those “smokers” lungs had to come from somebody.
I think the best solution to the problem would simply to be to publish the home address of the heads of the funeral home, and make sure that there was no police protection available for them. Natural selection in action, you see.
The worst part is that the bones were sold for transplant purposes, and Cooke died of bone cancer. The “sales slip” made him out to be ten years younger and said he’d died of a heart attack.
I think the best solution is prison for the people involved, plus disgorgement of all monies made under the scheme, payment of all future medical expenses related to the transplants done with the stolen tissue, plus punitives (I think a multiplier of five is good).
Here’s my reasoning: they did this because it was easy, and because it made them money. Take away what they love – money – to hurt them. Leaving them without police protection simply hurts them physically. It does not get them where it hurts the most.
Incidentally, I’m reading Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (thanks to Misnomer’s recommendation), and it’s strange to realize that with all the protections and procedures in place, we still have “resurrectionists” at work. But I suppose that even when there’s a legal market for something, there will still be a black market.
To follow up on this, I thought transplant material had to be removed while the patient was still nominally alive, or else the tissue began to deteriorate immediately? I don’t mean “alive” as in “alive and kicking” of course, I mean alive as in, still recieving oxygenated blood through artificial respiration & circulation.
I thought that once circulation stopped you only have an hour or two at most before the body is unusable?
Oh, I don’t think that the families who’ve had their loved ones corpses abused are going to be satisfied with merely hurting the folks. I’m sure some of the more creative ones will try to make the old UL about someone waking up in a bathtub filled with ice and a note stuck to their chest saying they’ve just had a kidney removed and that they should call the police, come true.
The ghouls running the funeral home have already been hurt financially, if you think about it. Do you think that they’ll ever be able to work in the industry again? I’m also certain that there’s plenty of lawyers lining up to handle the class action lawsuits which are sure to follow.
If he was alive he’d have been here by now, correcting our grammar.
Let’s see, you’re OK with desecrating the dead, causing their families unnecessary grief and stiffing seriously sick people for cash.
Well, there are words for people like that and “ghouls” isn’t the one that comes to mind…
“Murderers” is the word that comes to MY mind. A scheme like this is bound to lead (or to have already led) to at least a couple of deaths among the transplant recipients.
If he were alive…
I, too, was horrified to find that the Resurrection-Men are still going in this day and age. But, if money can be made from something, it will.