Ukrainian authorities will press charges against a morgue official who is alleged to have illegally recovered human tissue from corpses intended for the international market.
However they have dismissed accusations against three other morgue
officials in the city of Mykolaiv who were charged with similar offenses.
These moves are among the latest developments in
the Ukranian authorities’ investigation
of the relationship between coroners’ offices and for-profit companies that
supply raw material for manufacture of medical and dental devices. At issue is bone,
teeth and other body parts taken from 40 corpses in 2011 and early 2012.
Relatives of the dead claimed they were not properly consulted about
what had happened with their loved ones.
The one case going forward alleges a coroner, Oleh Tsekhovsky, forged the
consent signature of a family member of one of the donors.
If convicted, the coroner could face a $106 (Hr 850) fine, up to two years
of public service or three years of probation and employment restrictions,
according Ukraine’s Criminal Code.
The charges against the others were dropped because investigators lacked
evidence to prove the coroners had broken laws when they failed to tell
families about how much tissue was going to be harvested from dead loved ones, Ihor Skopenko, a lead
investigator at the Ukraine Security Service’s Mykolaiv regional office said.
The relatives had consented to have small pieces of tissue recovered
from their deceased family members by technicians at the regional morgue that
supplied a firm called BioImplant.
BioImplant is a government-controlled entity that obtained tissues from
regional morgues that were later sent to a German firm, Tutogen Medical.
Tutogen is a subsidiary of the United States publicly traded RTI Biologics, a medical device company
that makes implants from recycled human parts.
RTI and its German subsidiary, Tutogen Medical, suspended a relationship
with BioImplant and 20 Ukraine tissue banks after a series of articles reported by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in July.
Families of the deceased who were interviewed by ICIJ said they were
shocked to learn coroners had taken much more tissue than they consented to.
According to standards set by the American
Association of Tissue Banks (AATB), of which RTI is a member, tissue banks in the
United States are required to clearly identify to families what tissues will be
recovered and what effect that will have on the appearance of the body.
AATB declined to comment for this story. RTI also declined to comment
but it has said previously that RTI has “a long
history as a responsible steward of the gift of donation and delivering safe
tissue implants.”
Two previous cases involving morgues supplying BioImplant with tissue
allegedly obtained illegally were also closed without convictions.
In 2005, prosecutors in Kyiv dropped one case after ruling that no crime
could be proven if the recovered tissue had not been transplanted. In 2008, the
medical director of a morgue in Kryvyi Rih died while the jury was deliberating
in his criminal trial.
In a separate incident that is on-going, prosecutors in the western
Ukraine city of Ivano-Frankivsk in June 2012 announced they had charged
coroners from that regional morgue with deceiving twenty families into signing
donor consent forms between 2009-2011.
The Ivano-Frankovsk morgue signed a supply contract with BioImplant in
2007. RTI registered the same morgue with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
in June 2008, according to FDA records. This indicates that some of the
recovered human tissue may have been destined for the U.S.
Last week, Ukraine authorities claimed that four employees of two morgues
in Chernihiv, both previously registered with FDA, had illegally obtained tissue
from 159 corpses.
A statement issued by the security services said the tissue had been
sent to an unnamed “specialized state enterprise.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Vlad
Lavrov can be reached at [email protected].
