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Bass turns to own research for tissue-harvesting case

Written by DeadGirl
Thursday, 11 January 2007
Anthropologist uses cremation data, says man's bones removed By J.J. STAMBAUGH January 8, 2007 Famed forensic anthropologist Dr. William Bass, whose work at the University of Tennessee and its "Body Farm" have made him one of the world's leading experts on what happens to the dead, says the practice of illegal tissue harvesting is very real and very frightening. Shortly after federal and state authorities raised questions about a tissue-harvesting operation in New York, Bass was hired by a lawyer who wanted to learn if someone's remains had been plundered for profit by the now-defunct company Biomedical Tissue Services Inc. The problem, Bass said, was that the man's body already had been cremated. According to Brooklyn prosecutors, Biomedical Tissue Services, from 2000 to 2005, illegally took body parts from corpses, forged clean medical histories and sold the remains for implant purposes. The operation allegedly included a secret room in a funeral home, shadowy "recovery teams" and clandestine surgeries to remove bones or tissue from the recently deceased. People across the country received bone or tissue transplants traceable to Biomedical. The company is at the center of a 122-count criminal indictment and hundreds of civil cases, and at least two people from East Tennessee are undergoing retests after initial medical tests returned positive results for the HIV virus. Bass said he ended up comparing the post-cremation weight of the deceased man with data he'd collected as part of a study that was spurred by his involvement in examining human remains from the Tri-State Crematory debacle in Georgia. During the Tri-State case, Bass was questioned by a defense attorney who criticized his testimony because of the relatively small sampling of cremated remains from which he'd drawn his conclusions. "The question came up early in that case: How much do cremations weigh?" Bass said. "There really isn't too much in the literature, and very little scientifically. It fretted me for a while. And then I said, 'You know, I'm going to do something about this.' " Bass and another UT anthropologist, Dr. Richard Jantz, went on to conduct a study of post-cremation weights using samples drawn from 306 men and women. They published their findings in 2004, and empirical data compiled during the study later provided Bass with the statistical foundation needed to suggest a solution in the Biomedical-related case. Bass said he eventually was able to determine that some bones likely had been removed prior to the New York man's cremation by comparing the man's pre-death "weight and stature," the weight of his cremated remains and information compiled from 151 cremated men in the recent study. Bass said the practice of stealing body parts for medical reasons has been around for more than a thousand years. "When anatomists first wanted to teach anatomy 1,000 to 1,200 years ago, the way they got their bodies was to go to the cemetery and dig up somebody who had recently died," he said. In the early 1800s, the College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Scotland, had so many students that officials couldn't keep up with the demand for corpses. Body snatchers realized there was money to be made through nocturnal exhumations, and "this became so common the locals ironically nicknamed the people who undertook these horrific deeds 'Resurrectionists,' " according to the city of Edinburgh's Web site. The most infamous of the Resurrectionists were William Burke and William Hare, blamed for the murders of at least 16 people in the late 1820s whose corpses were sold to Dr. Robert Knox, an Edinburgh surgeon and teacher. Hare cooperated with authorities and was spared, but Burke later was hanged in front of about 25,000 people. His body was dissected publicly and his skeleton placed on display "to remind people of his horrid crimes," the city's Web site states. The Biomedical fiasco is a reminder that exploiting the dead for personal gain isn't confined to the past or to fictional scenarios, Bass said. "It is frightening," he said. "I expect it happens more than we realize. If your body is taken to a funeral home before it goes to a crematorium, it all depends on how reputable your funeral home is." http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_5264045,00.html

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

Taphophilia Facts

According to the Japanese Shinto religion, each person becomes a supernatural "kami" at the time of death. Kami continue to influence the daily lives of the living, one of the reasons ancestors are revered in Shinto homes.