Body parts scandal grows amid infection fears

The scope of a US scandal involving body parts plundered from corpses has begun to emerge amid a flood of legal action, with one company alone saying it has distributed thousands of pieces of human tissue that authorities fear could be tainted with disease.

In addition, three other companies have reported quarantining or destroying more than $5m in tissue from Biomedical Tissue Services – the now-defunct New Jersey company at the centre of the scandal.

While the exact amount of pieces distributed and used in operations has not been revealed, the early glimpse hints at how far-reaching this macabre tale could become.

Minneapolis-based Medtronic said at least 8,000 pieces that came from Biomedical Tissue Services “were implanted and the remainder is being recalled from the field and storage,” according to documents filed in US District Court in Ohio.

The number was revealed in a question-and-answer form the company sent to surgeons around the country in November 2005 shortly after it was notified that the tissue had dubious origins.

“We’ve been as transparent as possible,” Medtronic spokesman Bert Kelly said. “We felt like we had to be as open as possible. This is about patient safety for us.”

Biomedical Tissue Services has been accused of collecting body parts without donor consent and selling them for use in transplants that occurred at hospitals and medical facilities nationwide.

The owner of BTS and three others were charged in a scheme that earned them millions of dollars. All four have pleaded not guilty.

BTS supplied human bone, skin and tendons to Regeneration Technologies, LifeCell, Tutogen Medical, Lost Mountain Tissue Bank and the Blood and Tissue Centre of Central Texas.

Those companies processed the parts and companies like Medtronic distributed them. They are not accused of any wrongdoing.

Medtronic recalled the pieces after questions about BTS’s methods surfaced. Dozens of hospitals have already contacted hundreds of patients around the country who got body parts linked to the company.

The US Food and Drug Administration is concerned those parts could be infected with HIV, syphilis and hepatitis, but the risk of infection is small.

Regeneration says there have been no confirmed cases in which people contracted a disease from the tissue it processed. But the FDA won’t say whether any patients have ailments that might be linked with suspect tissue.

The FDA has also refused to reveal how many people received the BTS tissue.