January 2020

Page A12 JANUARY 2020 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS S ec t i on A (L to R) Alex,Tom and Andy Vanderwall of Vanderwall Funeral Home in Dayton,TN are shown taking delivery of their new Cadillac Kensington Hearse which was built by Federal Coach and purchased from John Muster, of Muster Coaches . vanderwall funeral home Muster Coaches 1-800-274-3619 Calhoun, KY nated his mother’s body to Biological Resource Center (BRC), hoping it could be used for Alzheimer’s research, according to Reuters. Years later, a reporter for Reuters contacted Stauffer with some shocking news. In 2016, Reuters found that more than 20 dead bodies donated to an Arizona broker were used in U.S. Army blast experiments. This was with- out the consent of the deceased or next of kin – and for some, it was done against families’ objections. The Army assumed that the authorizations were correct and legal. Troy Harp, who donated his mother’s and grandmoth- er’s remains to Biological Resource, stated, “This is a hor- ror story. It’s just unbelievable! This story is unbelievable.” Harp was told they would just take tissue to study leu- kemia and cancer specimens. On November 19, 2019, a jury in Maricopa Superior Court made an award of $58 million dollars to ten of the twenty-one plaintiffs against Steve Gore of Biological Re- sources, Inc. The other plaintiffs did not testify at the trial. There is hope that the awarded amount will be received by these families. The important verdict is that these whole-body donation organizations should only contin- ue these operations with transparency and dignity; if not, they do so at their own peril. In 2016, Arizona House of Representatives passed HB 2307, which requires regulation of the body donation in- dustry, and it was signed into law. The bill was revised in 2017 but never implemented. Updates to Federal laws were taking place and the state waited until they took ef- fect to avoid conflict. Arizona hopes to have regulations in place in early 2020. In the discussion of HB2307, former body donation employee John Cover asked a simple question: “You have to be licensed to do people’s nails. Why aren’t you li- censed to be a human-tissue bank?” “There is more regulation for a head of lettuce than there is for a human head.” –John Cover Observations When FBI Special Agent Mark Cwynar was inspecting the facilities they had just raided, Biological Resources Cen- ter, Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona, his years of experience were tested by the gruesomeness he and his agents would see. There were containers of severed heads and limbs, frozen various body parts without any identification, and human trunks with limbs and genitalia removed. The most dis- turbing sights were a container full of “male reproductive parts” and a torso “with the head removed and replaced with a similar, but smaller, head sewn together in a Fran- kenstein manner,” Agent Cwynar testified. Fifteen severed heads found in leaking plastic bags at an airport in Michigan led the FBI to realize this was a multi- state investigation involving several donation companies, including one in Arizona. In January 2014, the raid at Biological Resources revealed the clutter of human parts, not properly identified, and labs with blood on the floor. The agents began to piece together the network of the sale of tissue to laboratories and to other donation companies. Tests for infectious disease were per- formed, but the results were ignored. Donation authoriza- tions from families would specify what they would want their loved one used for. These were often ignored as well. Decedents were sold to the US Department of Defense for ammunition testing or to the automobile industry as test dummies. These remains were sold with some containing infectious disease, unknown to the buyers. One of those sellers was International Biological, Inc. of Detroit, Michigan, owned by Arthur Rathburn. IBI rent- ed bodies and body parts to be used in dental and medical training. The biggest problem was that some of this tissue was infected with infectious disease. Rathburn knew it but By Steven Palmer Steven Palmer entered funeral service in 1971. He is an honors graduate of the New England Institute of Applied Arts & Sciences. He has been licensed on both coasts, he owned the Westcott Funeral Homes of Cottonwood and Camp Verde, AZ, where he remains ac- tive in operations. Steve offers his observations on current funeral ser- vice issues. He may be reached by mail at PO Box 352, Cottonwood, AZ 86326, by phone at (928)634-9566, by fax at (928)634-5156, by e-mail at steve@westcottfuneralhome.com or through his website at www.westcottfuneralhome.com or on Facebook. www.nomispublications.com Funeral Home & Cemetery News Contributors share insights and exchange ideas. B logs didn’t disclose it. Sepsis, aspirational pneumonia, Hepatitis B and HIV were in tissues sold. Arthur Rathburn was sentenced to nine years in federal prison inMay 2018 for selling and rent- ing body parts infectedwithHIV and hepatitis to unsuspecting buyers at medical and dental schools across the country. Biological Resource Center, Inc. owner Steve Gore had no medical training and no accredited education beyond high school. BRC received “about 5,000 human bodies and dis- tributed more than 20,000 body parts,” according to Reuters News Service. “We expected two freezers and a few hundred pounds of body parts. Instead we found 40 freezers with 10 tons of bod- ies and parts,” Charles Loftus, former Agent for the Attorney General’s office, told Reuters. In 2015, Gore pleaded guilty to a state charge of conduct- ing an illegal enterprise and was given a 12-month suspended sentence and 48 months of probation. He was also ordered to pay $122,000 in restitution. “Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime,” wrote 18 th century Italian dramatist Vittorio Alfieri. But twenty-one of the families served by Biological resourc- es, Inc. did not think that Steve Gore felt the disgrace, or re- ceived the punishment, for the hurt he had caused. They filed a civil suit against BRC’s founder and own- er Gore in Maricopa County Superior Court. Their claims, as reported by the Arizona Republic , were “that the remains of their family members were obtained by false statements, that body parts were being sold for profit, and they were not stored, treated or disposed of with dignity or respect.” The families felt that Gore was not forthcoming about the fact that their donated family members were to be “cut up into pieces and sold to middlemen.” They were not told that their loved one’s remains might become auto crash test dum- mies or victims of military assault testing. Louis William Aloia, Jr, 73, of Phoenix, who died of can- cer, was a newspaper pressman. He was donated in 2013. His wife Gwen signed donation authorizations while Louis was in hospice care. She now questions the hospice’s understanding of what this company was about. His frozen head was found in a freezer at Biological Resource’s facilities. She has received his ashes but has doubts about whose remains they are. Inside Edition , the syndicated investigative television show, invited the families of the Biological Resource Centers donors to tell their stories. “We have no knowledge of what’s in the box (urn),” said Sue Visser, who donated her husband’s body to medical research. More than five years ago, Jim Stauffer’s mother, Doris, died in hospice care after suffering from Alzheimer’s. Stauffer do- Delayed Justice “It’s not how you treat human beings, human remains. You don’t throw them in a bunch of body bags and throw them into a freezer like a pile of garbage.” –Matthew Parker, former agent for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office In nite Innovations · 3745 Evergreen · Stra ord, MO 65757 · 800-362-6224 · www.infparts.com · sales@infparts.com • Funeral Car Repair Parts and Accessories • SpecialtyWindshields • Full Line of Trim & Body Parts • Rollers & Bier Pins • Flag Staffs...And More! Serving our Customers for over 30 years! Our New 55,000 Sq. Ft. Facility Karansky and Bussen announce the launch of Farewelling Digital Platform can easily personalize their own celebrations and spark meaningful conversations around a taboo topic.” Farewelling’s core mission is to connect people to the best local providers in their area. Basic and pre- ferred listings for funeral homes are currently offered in three markets, New York Metro Area, Los Angeles, and San Francisco Bay Area. A lot of care and atten- tion has been spent to give the listings style and sub- stance with an editorial flavor. Farewelling will soon be expanding to other markets. Farewelling also celebrates leaders, innovators and heroes in the industry, and are doing so by profiling excellence. If a funeral home has news or a very special funeral director or other hero they’d like to celebrate, they can contact us about a possible profile. The inaugural Hero Profile of Matthew Fiorillo can be found at https://myfarewelling.com/lately/ our -heroes-meet-matthew-fiorillo-funeral-director. Partnerships with industry providers from legal servic- es to travel brands and decor will be unveiled in the fu- ture. If you are interested in having your funeral home listed visit www.myfarewelling.com or email elizabeth@ myfarewelling.com. Continued from Page A8 L ike Us On Facebook!