I prefer NO bone regeneration products AT ALL.


http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14174604.htm


Posted on Fri, Mar. 24, 2006
Tainted-implant scandal widensBy KITTY CAPARELLA & MARY
FLANNERYcaparek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 215-854-5880

The district attorney's office is looking into the tainted-body-parts
scandal in Philadelphia, as more area patients - 16 here and 75 at the
Jersey shore - have been notified that they have been implanted with
potentially tainted tissue.
Sources close to the D.A.'s office said investigators were reviewing
medical examiner's records regarding 128 unclaimed bodies that were
sent to Liberty Cremation, Inc. in 2004 and 2005 as a preliminary step
to opening an investigation.
D.A. Lynne Abraham would not confirm nor deny the probe, said her
spokeswoman, Cathy Abookire.
The crematorium is partly owned by Louis Garzone, who owns a Kensington
funeral home that is under investigation by the Brooklyn D.A.'s office
in a body-parts scandal that reaches across the United States and
Canada.
The Louis Garzone Funeral Home, on Somerset Street near Ruth, is one of
30 funeral parlors - and the only one in Pennsylvania - under
investigation for supplying body parts to the FDA-closed Biomedical
Tissue Services, Inc., of Fort Lee, N.J., according to sources close to
the investigation.
Louis Garzone, 63, has not been charged or named in an indictment. He
has declined to comment.
A source familiar with the Brooklyn investigation said the Philadelphia
D.A.'s office had not contacted the Brooklyn D.A.'s office about the
probe.
Last month, Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services,
Inc.; his business partner, and two tissue-recovery workers were
charged by a Brooklyn grand jury with harvesting body parts without
legal consent and with taking tissue from cadavers in unsanitary
conditions and without proper screening for disease. All four have
pleaded not guilty.
A former Biomedical employee, Kevin Vickers, told the Daily News in a
report last week that he dissected dozens of corpses inside Louis
Garzone's funeral home during the last two months of 2004.
After harvesting spines, veins, tendons and bones, the recovery
technician said, he brought them in plastic bags on ice to Biomedical.
Mastromarino's lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said the Louis Garzone home was
the only Philadelphia facility supplying body parts.
A source familiar with the investigation said the home had sold bodies
to Biomedical since early 2004.
Gallucci has said Mastromarino relied on funeral directors to screen
bodies for disease and to receive family permission for tissue
harvesting.
The Brooklyn indictment charged Mastromarino and others with forging
death certificates and consent forms by altering the deceased's age and
cause of death.
At least 16 patients from six Philadelphia-area hospitals and about 75
from two New Jersey shore hospitals have been notified they received
potentially tainted tissue in recent surgeries.
The FDA ordered the recall of tissue from Biomedical and at least five
vendors in October and continues to urge patients to receive blood
tests for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphillis and other diseases. At the
same time, the FDA says the risk of infection is low.
Meantime, civil lawsuits from Oklahoma to New York are flooding the
courts on behalf of patients who received potentially tainted tissue
and families who gave no consent to have their loved ones' body parts
removed.
In general, local hospitals have not been named in the patients'
lawsuits.
"We think the responsibility rests with the people who harvested the
human tissue and with the companies that had obligation to test," said
Philadelphia attorney Aaron Freiwald. "The doctors and the hospitals
had good reason to rely on these companies to provide them with a safe
product."
Five Philadelphia-area hospitals have acknowledged that their patients
received potentially contaminated tissue from Biomedical, or their
suppliers.
Four patients from Albert Einstein Medical Center and one from Abington
Hospital have been notified, along with eight from Jefferson and one
apiece at Hahnemann and Temple.
With an additonal case from Holy Redeemer Hospital in Eastern
Montgomery County, there are 16 known cases in the area.
At the shore, 15 patients at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in
Atlantic City and Pomona received suspect tissue, according to
spokeswoman Jennifer Tornetta.
About 60 patients treated at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point
also received this tissue, according to the Newark Star Ledger. The
hospital did not return calls yesterday seeking confirmation.
Frankford Hospital received a notification and administrators were
relieved to discover that the recalled tissue for skin grafting had not
yet been implanted into a patient.
"It was still in the receiving area," said spokeswoman Maria Slade. "It
was never used. We returned it to the supplier."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff writer Simone Weichselbaum contributed to this report.
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