The bones of broadcaster Alistair Cooke deserved to be left to rest in peace, as did those other corpses which were mutilated and sold off in an
astonishingly lucrative multi-million pound illegal body parts trade.
The fact that he was 95 did not deter greedy New York undertakers from their ghoulish and sickening acts of desecration, I can’t imagine his body could have been considered in “prime” condition by any stretch of the imagination, which makes this all the more remarkable.
It seems more than 1,000 body parts were plundered in New York and sold for transplants. This included potentially contaminated body parts which were sold to our NHS, and up to 77 patients may have had bone grafts.
So how is this unusual industry regulated? Is it carried out legitimately in the UK, or do we import all our body parts? If so, what is the legal framework for obtaining tissue or bones, tendons and ligaments? How thoroughly is the source of body parts checked?
It seems the main legitimate US source comes from cadavers donated to medical schools and surplus parts can be sent to not-for-profit biomedical corporations. A second source is tissue and organ banks. Obviously these sources could not meet the global demand.
Worryingly, our Government does not keep a tally on the numbers of imported body parts. This is ludicrous because of the risk of infection and this case highlights an illegal trade few of us knew existed beforehand.
Alistair Cooke’s daughter is urging the world to focus on the sale of illegal body parts and stamp it out, let’s hope it does. I also wonder if this case would have had the same media coverage had it not been for the fact that it involved the body of our popular, benign broadcasters who mesmerised listeners with is popular Letter from America and was not allowed to rest in peace. Hopefully, his spirit is at peace though.
