Speaking of Dental Ihttp://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14186228.htmlants .....


Mastromarino is/was a dentist ......

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Implant connection as with bone augmentation.


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http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14186228.htm

Posted on Sun, Mar. 26, 2006
Body-parts scandal labeled U.S. crisisHundreds across the country
received stolen, tainted tissue.By Troy GrahamInquirer Staff Writer

Darlene Krzywicki's doctor told her there was a recall related to her
spinal surgery, she thought he was talking about the metal rod and
screws that had been inserted.

She said she didn't even know that bone and marrow from a cadaver had
been used in her operation, let alone that the body parts had been
illegally harvested and had not been screened for infectious diseases.
But the worst news was still to come.
Krzywicki, a mother of two from Northeast Philadelphia, had contracted
hepatitis C from the cadaver parts.
"You can open someone up and take something out," she said. "You can't
take the hepatitis C away."
Krzywicki, 42, has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia,
joining hundreds of people across the country who have sued after
learning they received unscreened tissue from Biomedical Tissue
Services, a now-closed Fort Lee, N.J., company.
As more and more victims are notified every day, a story that began as
a ghastly tale that made good grist for the New York tabloids has
exploded into something far bigger.
Some people involved in the case say thousands of people could have
received unscreened tissue, and the patients' lawyers are calling this
a brewing national health crisis.
"It's like an onion. You keep peeling it away and there's more and more
layers," said Paul Garelick, an Edison, N.J., lawyer whose firm,
Lombardi & Lombardi, filed the first lawsuit in the case. "I think
you'll find there were a lot of people who didn't do what they were
supposed to do."
Biomedical Tissue owner Michael Mastromarino has been accused of
stealing body parts from 1,077 cadavers without family consent from as
many as 30 funeral homes, selling the unscreened tissue at huge
profits, and falsifying paperwork to cover his trail.
Mastromarino and three others were charged last month by the Brooklyn
District Attorney in a 122-count indictment. Mastromarino and the
others have pleaded not guilty.
New indictments are expected soon as investigators probe the funeral
homes and others. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last
month that investigators had identified funeral homes in New York,
northern New Jersey and one in Philadelphia that participated in the
body-snatching.
The Brooklyn and Philadelphia District Attorney's Offices both declined
to comment. A former Biomedical Tissue employee told the Philadelphia
Daily News in an interview last month that he made a dozen trips to the
Louis Garzone Funeral Home in Kensington in late 2004, harvesting two or
three bodies on each trip.
The employee, Kevin Vickers, said he assumed that the families had
given consent.
"It is bad enough if I operated on one body without consent," he told
the Daily News. "I feel like I have been stealing from the dead."
Authorities in New York have exhumed more than a dozen bodies there to
confirm that parts were illegally harvested, sometimes finding plastic
hardware-store tubing instead of bones. No court orders to dig up any
bodies have been filed in Philadelphia, according to a records search
last week.
While criminal investigators probe the thefts, the list of patients and
hospitals that received the parts continues to grow, and some lawyers
wonder whether the government's efforts are sufficient to track down
all the victims.
A national law firm with hundreds of clients who received tissue from
Mastromarino's company said more than 100 hospitals unwittingly used
the black-market body parts. The hospitals include Temple, Hahnemann,
Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein in Philadelphia, Holy Redeemer in
Montgomery County and Shore Memorial Hospital and AtlantiCare Regional
Medical Center in New Jersey.
Mastromarino's tissue went through five tissue processors and at least
one major distributor that handled 8,000 parts. A spokesman for the
Food and Drug Administration, which closed Biomedical Tissue Services
in February, said last week that he could not answer questions about
how people who are affected by the scandal are being notified.
The responsibility to tell patients has largely been left to doctors
and hospitals, who sometimes refer patients back to the tissue
distributors for more information.
Garelick said he had "a deep concern" whether all the affected patients
would be notified. He said there are often gaps in the record-keeping
for body parts - not to mention Mastromarino's alleged fraudulent
bookkeeping.
"There's a break in the chain of custody from the donors to the
recipients," he said. "That, to us, seems like a public health issue."
Claudine Homolash, a Philadelphia lawyer, has sued on behalf of a man
who got a cadaver tendon in a knee surgery. His client can't afford
tests for infectious disease, and he can't find out whether his tendon
came from Mastromarino's company.
"It's pretty hard to find this stuff out," Homolash said. "I think the
notification is actually going to be managed by the courts."
Motley Rice, a nationally renowned law firm that has sued terrorist
financiers on behalf of 9/11 victims, has 500 to 600 clients, including
15 who contracted hepatitis C. Motley Rice lawyers said they met with
one Florida patient last week who had contracted HIV.
"Every day that goes by you get more and more clients," said Kevin
Dean, a lawyer at Motley Rice. "I think there's literally thousands."
For those patients such as Krzywicki who contract a contagious disease,
a new medical and emotional struggle begins.
"First of all, it's scary," said Krzywicki's lawyer, Aaron Freiwald.
"There's a lot of stigma that goes along with it, unfortunately."
So far, Krzywicki has endured a liver biopsy and the strange looks and
ill-informed questions of other parents at her son's school. She said
she tries to avoid reading stories about the body-part scandal because
"they make me sick."
"It makes me sick to think someone would do that," she said. "It's like
psychotic, to think just about yourself and money like that."
Bad Body Parts?
Do you have reason to believe you received improperly screened human
tissue during surgery? Have you received a notice from the government
or from your doctor or dentist?
The Inquirer would like to tell your story. Please contact us at
856-779-3837 or e-mail tgraham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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