Tainted Tissue

A recent scandal involving illegally harvested tissues that were sold to tissue banks without proper testing has shocked the country and has potentially put thousands of patients at risk of developing deadly diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis, and syphilis. Now defunct New Jersey tissue supply company Biomedical Tissue Services allegedly took illicit bone, skin, and organ tissue from corpses without consent from loved ones and sold them throughout the U.S. and Canada without testing for them for impurities or diseases.

Embalmer Joseph Nicelli and Michael Mastromarino, a former dentist who lost his license due to drug charges in 1990, started BTS in 2001 by stealing tissue from unsanctioned bodies and selling them to tissue banks for distribution to hospitals for transplant. These criminals deceived their clients and violated thousands of bodies in an effort to profit from the $1 billion a year transplant business. They even replaced bone samples with PVC pipe and filled empty body cavities with bags of screws and surgical gloves in order to hide the gruesome crime during open casket funerals. In some cases, BTS forged death certificates in order to cover up potentially serious conditions that may have otherwise disqualified them from transplant eligibility.

Although the Food and Drug Administration will not disclose the exact number of at-risk patients who received the questionable tissue, medical giant Medtronic received 13,000 tissue samples from BTS and distributed it to at least 8,000 patients. These innocent people were manipulated and deceived by immoral criminals who committed one of the most reprehensible and revolting violations imaginable.

If you or someone you love underwent an organ or tissue transplant recently or had another procedure that used suspect tissue such as skin and bone grafts, you may be at risk of serious medical consequences. There is no accurate count of how many potentially-tainted samples Biomedical Technical Services provided to tissue banks, but the risks are too severe to ignore. Don't suffer in silence any longer - let a dedicated and compassionate attorney help you get you get the answers you need and the financial compensation that you deserve today.