“Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains,” by Annie Cheney
It’s hard to imagine subject matter more cringe-worthy than the for-profit tissue and body business. Perhaps this explains the relative obscurity of Annie Cheney’s “Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains,” a muckraking exposé on this for-profit, shockingly lucrative industry. Upon the book’s release, publications around the country gave it generally favorable reviews, and predicted that it should blow the lid off of this subject. But it never happened. “Body Brokers” is a slim book at 193 pages, expanded from a piece Cheney wrote for Harper’s, perhaps the first significant investigation into this issue. Since then, it has also been the last.
This is not for lack of talent on Cheney’s part. If a bit over-wrought at times, “Body Brokers” is engaging, fast-paced, and informative without being didactic. Most readers will be surprised that for-profit companies facilitate a large part of a non-profit tissue or body donation. And these companies make an, erm, killing off of them.
When a person agrees to donate their body or tissue following their death, this material is distributed to medical supply companies and universities around the country. This transaction has come to be enabled by middlemen called “body brokers,” individuals who locate and purchase the body or tissue, often for little more than reimbursement for a hospital’s expenses. It then sells the purchase to a third party at a huge mark up. The body brokers’ selling point is his ability to locate the tissue or body parts that meet their buyers’ demands.
This demand is vast, and growing. And oftentimes, as Cheney chronicles copiously and gruesomely in her book, the body brokers’ “connections” are not only those in the medical field, but corrupt individuals in the funeral and cremation industry who have realized the easy money they can make selling body parts taken from cadavers prior to cremation or a closed casket funeral, unbeknownst to the decedent’s family.
The first half of the book closely follows the path of one such broker, Michael Brown, a successful crematory operator who one day received a phone call from a company called Innovations in Medical Education and Technology, a firm that was attempting to supply body parts for a surgical training seminar in Southern California. After meeting with the company’s founder, a man named Augie Perna, Mr. Brown agreed to enter into a partnership with them — he would go on to expand his crematorium and open up a body donation facility in the new building. He could now offer his customers a package where they would donate their body and receive a free cremation, though not before Brown removed and stored any parts he wanted. It was, as the title of Cheney’s chapter re-states, “An Ideal Situation.” It wasn’t until several years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a guilty plea to 66 counts of mutilation of remains and embezzlement later, that Brown’s business was brought to a close thanks to an employee whistle-blower.
Credit:labroots.com
Cheney introduces a range of players at all stages of this field, and they assure her that it is absolutely the business to be in — that is, all those on the legal side. Because, while it seems like simple sense that a multi-million dollar industry could not be receiving all of their product from donations, no government agency enforces or regulates this market. Writes Cheney, “Unlike organ procurement organizations, tissue banks are not required to be nonprofits. No one audits their finances.”
What can begin as a nonprofit organization working in conjunction with a local medical college, can become a for-profit business providing medical supplies and implants, such as the case of Regeneration Technologies, Inc., a tissue processor in Florida which in 2003 had $75 million in revenues. If the profit motive is there, and there’s scant reason beyond morality not to partake, there seems little reason why shady practices like the ones Cheney documents shouldn’t flourish.
And of course, this is not all a bad thing. Without tissue or body donation American health care would be in a far worse place than it is now. But it does highlight a discouraging, and even dangerous lack of public stomach for these sorts of uncomfortable discussions. Cheney describes one instance where a raft of knee ligament implants supplied by a funeral home, from a cadaver that had been deceased for longer than is safe, led to violent illness and in one case a transfer patient’s death. But, as the crooked crematorium operator Michael Brown puts it, “The only regulations that stay true are the ones that someone had an aggressive conviction about, like the mother that loses her child to a drunk driver.”
Unfortunately, it is far easier for American politics to deal with over-drinking than with what happens to our bodies after we die.
Editor’s Note: Since Cheney’s book debuted, the U.S. government has done little to curb the abuses of the body-broker industry. Read our article about a company that turned a $27 million profit selling parts from donated bodies just last year.
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Why does this not get more attention! What does it take to wake people up and get them concern? The selling of their own bodies parts and in a dirty suspicious way no less! This is sad and crazy…..
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Annie Chenney is a THIEF. I began sending out Sneak Previews of MY book “Missing Pieces” back in 2001 after a 1999 accidental discovery of bones, tissue, organs & body parts (also a complete severed head of a man) in a morgue refrigerator where I was contracted out to strip & wax tile floors for 2 years in Mississippi at a hospital. (The largest not for profit health care system in the United States) yeah right…NOT FOR PROFIT my a$$. They fired & banned me the moment I asked “what do ya’ll do with all those body parts in the refrigerator”? I went from a role model employee and business owner to “they elvisguy who left the building forever” yeah…they led the entire town to think I did something to deserve to be terminated & banned. Then, my home was burned to the ground and pets killed when I filed a lawsuit so THANKS ANNIE. After I contacted Annie online..she stold my story and even used “word for word” accounts of my sneak preview I had sent out online begging someone to investigate the hospital that fired me. I lost my business, my wife filed for divorce as one by one…every contract I had for over 8 years began to terminate me week by week. I got a fast education on MASS CORRUPTION in a small hick town (tupelo, Mississippi) Now I see why Elvis left and never claimed it as his “hometown” (Memphis) I will NEVER return to Tupelo, Ms either. Oh…by the way…I am also an Elvis Tribute artist who used to be on TV and in all the papers for my chairty work and fund raisers throughout northeast, Ms…just call the Tupelo Daily Journal newspaper or WTVA television station (they all fear me now) b/c I investigated them all and found they had financial ties to the hospital that fired me. They all scratch each others backs with thousand dollar Bill$. Jus saying. This is Kevin Curtis & I approve this message.
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Interesting comment Kevin.
Suzette
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Regarding Augie Perna:
I am a Gynecologist Oncologist, and a Laparoscopist, and I produce an ACOG-accredited surgical course for which Mr. Augie Perna was to provide cadavers. He has frequently provided cadavers to SGO as well. This letter is to warn you of a potential problem.
To alleviate his cash concerns, about five years ago, he asked me to make monthly payments throughout the year, as he collects the cadavers, so that only a small balance is due at the completion of the course. He has provided us with cadavers for 15 years and we have never had a contract. He has never used the word “nonrefundable”.
I have paid Mr. Perna $7,500 per month for the last 10 months, by verbal agreement, for the LIGO course that was scheduled for May 28-30, 2020. Our state and local governments canceled the course due to COVID.
When I called Mr. Perna to inform him that the course was canceled and to request my $75,000 be returned, Mr. Perna informed me that he planned to keep all of the money, alleging that it was a “non-refundable deposit” “per our contract” because he has already collected 26 cadavers, ordered laboratory tests on them for HIV and Hepatitis and is storing them in his freezer for the course. I suggested that he sell the cadavers to a future Gyn course, receiving the same price, and covering all the costs of procuring and prepping and transferring them, as per his usual invoice.
It would just make for a “slow” year for him as we all have had. Indeed, COVID is causing many Americans to have a difficult business year, and this delay of sale may be hard on his business. The loss of the LIGO course has been hard on my end as well. We all have COVID losses that are ours to bear.
As the producer of the LIGO course, I have refunded all of the registration fees because I did not provide the goods and services ( i.e., the course), so that money was not ours to keep.
I have refunded all of the industry support money for the course, because course did not happen; so that money too was not ours to keep.
I do not expect a refund of money that I paid to the firm that administered the course, (website, brochure, postage, registration etc), because they have already provided their goods and services to me, and these services cannot be reused, or resold to anyone. So that money was NOT ours to get refunded.
So far, I have spent 10k for a lawyer to get Perna to refund my money. Mr. Perna has since offered to return $25,000 and keep $50,000 to cover his “costs”. Those “costs” as delineated in his invoices, are always paid by the purchaser, and will be recouped at a later sale to a later purchaser, and are not my responsibility. If he keeps even $50,000, he will be doubly collecting for his prep and production costs, illegitimately, from both me AND the future course producer.
Mr. Perna’s usual invoice shows that he undertakes $3,000 in administrative efforts to secure and prep cadavers for a course, and this portion MAY have already been done, cannot be resold, and is my responsibility to cover. I would be happy if that were what he intended to retain, as he may have done that work. Please review his invoice.
Since he can store and resell the cadavers, he should return $72,000 because, per his invoice, that is the actual cost of cadavers, prep and production, and that will be paid to Mr. Perna by a future course for those same cadavers. (American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists, Society for Gynecologic Oncologist, and American College of OB/GYN).
Because he never provided any goods for us, he should return $72,000, because it is not his to keep. Because he may have done $3,000 in service for us, he should keep $3,000.
Like me, Mr. Perna has had a slow year due to COVID. Nonetheless, he has to honestly accept that while both our businesses suffered from COVID we are each obliged to shoulder our own business responsibilities and RETURN MONEY THAT WE DID NOT EARN AND DO NOT DESERVE. He has so far refused.
I am happy to answer your questions about this and to provide a copy of Perna’s invoice and my lawyer’s letter to him summarizing this issue..
Kate O’Hanlanb, MD
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Hi Kate,
It sounds like you are in the same situation many are in this country with the lockdown causing a disruption for all. These are indeed trying times with too many of us working best they can to make an honest living. Sadly not all are willing to do the right thing. I am so sorry to hear of your situation. Thank you for sharing it with us and I hope the best for the future of your business.
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Kate,
Sorry to hear of your problem. With this Covid part of life we are now experiencing, it is a difficult time for many like you who got caught unexpectedly. Lots of ethics involved and I hope this all worked out for the best.
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