|
.
Articles » Medical Examiner
Lots of Money Found in the Business of Cadavers
Elliot Rozenberg
Whether it is a family decision or a preference stated by a person before he or she dies thousands upon thousands of bodies are donated each year for the purposes of organ donation, tissue donation, and medical research. The thing that people do not know is the amount of money a “body broker” can make off of the body of your loved one.
According to a recent article written by Robert Davis for USA Today, “body brokers” are becoming very common in an industry that did not receive a lot of attention in the past. Due to the extremely high demand for bodies and body parts by people in need of an organ or tissue transplant or by medical researchers, the value of a cadaver has skyrocketed.
According to Davis, “body brokers”, who can be members of an organization such as a university or a tissue bank or “middle men” in the process of the sale of a cadaver can make between $100,000 and $300,000 per body. Even though there are federal laws that forbid the sale of bodies or body parts for transplantation, there are no laws that prohibit the sale of a body to a university or company. This enables companies who manufacture medical supplies to use these purchased cadavers for product testing and research.
Many people are outraged because the “body brokers” are forming a business off of dead bodies which have been donated to be put to good use. Instead, the bodies are being mishandled, lost, and dismantled and the worse part is that people are making money from it. A solution that has been presented in order to solve this problem is a law that requires specific notes, details and records to be kept of a body that has been donated. This would enable the government agencies and organizations to keep track of the cadavers that have been accepted as medical research.
|
|
