Money rules. The FDA turns a blind-eye and tweaks its neck in another direction. Legislators suc*****b to the power brokers. Families and the dearly departed believe they are selfless contributors to the betterment of science and humankind. But, the truth more often than most of us are willing to acknowledge, is that they are being duped.

In Annie Cheney’s book, Body Brokers, she delves deeply into America’s underground trade of brokering bodies and body parts. A new, fresh body can bring in as much as $200,000 if sold off in parts. Dieners are expert at precisely cutting off limbs, dissecting hearts and brains, even blood vessels and skin. Each cutting has a price tag. If it’s new meat, and that is how the industry views the deceased, its worth is considerably more.

An industry that is not bound by laws or legislators is permitted to run amuck. Individuals who request that their bodies be given to medical science, or loved ones whose loved one is taken suddenly and who may offer their remains to science, are unaware that the university coffers are overflowing with the bodies of the departed. Unscrupulous professors tempted by the big bucks are succ-umbing to the seduction of getting rich quick.

Today’s bodies originally donated, unbeknownst to the families, routinely show up in fancy hotels like Trump International in Miami. Steel gurney’s line up in a row with cadavers in altered stages of decomposition and are displayed under surgical lights readied for the surgeon’s new lessons. Modern day companies of surgical equipment instruct physicians and surgeons on their latest techniques on cadavers in fancy hotels. Although spray bottles of disinfectant and room deodorizers are used, there is no denying the stench of rotting flesh. An unusual occurrence, one would think in the elegant ballroom of many noteworthy hotels. Surprisingly, it is the same ballroom, which one might visit for dinner or a wedding celebration the day after a cadaver class. The bodies are always supplied by the infamous, unregulated body broker.

With no end in sight for the need of fresh bodies it would seem that body brokering is a business growing steadily every day. One such corporation, RTI, or Regeneration Technologies, Inc., based in Florida is already a multi-billion dollar company that is spreading its wealth by buying up smaller companies and going international.

Willed body programs of many universities are well intentioned, but not so true are the dieners whose job it is to dissect and dismember or the ill-paid professor struggling to make ends meet. Without legislation and laws protecting our dearly departed, it appears that one is worth more dead then alive. Yes, indeed the grave robber is back. He’s still a ghoul; he’s just better dressed.

Source:  http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_635.shtml