8 ms·

Dutch hospitals to drop U.S. body brokers, cite ethical concerns

130 points by Jerry2 8y ago

Rainymood 8y ago
>The hospitals told Reuters in recent weeks they made their decisions on ethical grounds. The move comes amid investigations by U.S. law enforcement into some so-called body brokers - companies that obtain the dead, often through donation, dissect them and sell the parts for profit. Is this what peak capitalism looks like?
- NTDF9 8y ago
  > Is this what peak capitalism looks like? Does money have more value than humans, life, kids, health, freedom? If yes, them yes. Oops, we're already there.
- aylmao 8y ago
  What really gets me is the “for profit”, especially since these are organ donors. They get their “merchandise” for free from the last goodwill of people. If not, apparently they’ll offer free cremation to families to convince them to agree to donating the organs— since they have to dispose of the corpse anyway this is probably just an expense they’d have to pay regardless. And then they sell this donation for profit. This is baffling.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > they’ll offer free cremation to families to convince them to agree to donating the organs— since they have to dispose of the corpse anyway this is probably just an expense they’d have to pay regardless. Um, no? If they aren't given custody of the body, they don't have to dispose of the corpse. The family would have to do that.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    Which isn't that different to how many "charitable" organizations are actually for-profit organizations. Another example of this would be clothing donations. Most people donate clothing with the expectation that it will be given to the needy for free. When in reality, these second-hand clothes will usually be sold to traders who then retail them in developing countries [0], undercutting the domestic competition who can't compete with the massive influx of "free" clothing. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2015/feb/13/second-hand-clothes-charity-donations-africa https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable...
- carbocation 8y ago
  In the 1800s, people would murder people in order to sell their bodies to medical schools. (The term is “burking.”)
perfunctory 8y ago
> Although the declared value of the head on the customs form was $25, the going rate for a human head in the U.S. market is currently around $500, Reuters found
- ryanlol 8y ago
  So how does one actually buy a head? I need one for instagram.
  - pizzazzaro 8y ago
    Im sure you can contact Medicure on some .onion website.
  - tomcam 8y ago
    So many people struggling just to get a head these days
ekianjo 8y ago
> many brokers offer donor families free cremation in return for donating a body Wait, what do they cremate then if they get to keep the body??
- aylmao 8y ago
  Guessing this is after they take the “useful” organs out? My guess is not the whole body is necessary. Poor wording in my opinion.
  - Flashtoo 8y ago
    Considering they sell heads and knees too, I'm not too sure how much is left once they're done.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  The body gets "scavenged", and then it gets cremated. The ash people get in an urn or necklace is very, very little amount of the total amount of ash. I carry a donor, and I want to be cremated as well (since I find it pathetic to use land after I passed away). If I die, I want whoever is left on Earth to benefit from my legacy. Mainly my family, but also others who are in need. I'd only be grateful if someone else would do the same for me if they'd pass away. This is why I support the modernisation that being a donor is opt-out in 2019 instead of opt-in (in NL). As far as I'm concerned, those who are donor get priority over those who are not donor, to avoid leeches (akin to people who don't vaccinate who benefit from those who do).
  - eveningcoffee 8y ago
    I find this potentially very dangerous because this may motivate people who are supposed to save you to value the value of your body parts over the value of your life.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Not judging you [1] but I do find that a very misanthropic view of humankind. Those who save you are unable to know beforehand to whom your body parts are going to get used to. Doctors don't even know this beforehand either. Perhaps if you got very rare characteristics. I've had to make the decision in the past to give my father, who was already very ill, one of my kidneys. That's a very difficult and emotional decision to make... [1] I used to be not a registered donor because I didn't want anyone except my nearest family members to know about this. However, knowing about it right after death because it is in your wallet or registered on the internet can save lives.
ekianjo 8y ago
One paragraph: > From 2012 to 2016, according to manifest records reviewed by Reuters, MedCure shipped body parts valued at a total of more than $500,000 from the United States to the Netherlands. MedCure said it helps connect donors and scientific, research and medical entities. "We are an accredited and regulated institution and adhere to the best-in-class industry standards for safety ethics, and transparency," the company said in a statement to Reuters. Followed by: > Freek Dikkers, the professor of ear, nose and throat medicine at the AMC whose department bought the heads, said it was stopping after learning that the company solicits donors at hospices and old age homes and that its former owners earned millions from the trade. Dikkers said that was “unacceptable.” Something does not add up. How can you be a champion of "transparency" while your clients ignore (or pretend to ignore?) how you source the parts?
- stareatgoats 8y ago
  They said "best-in-class (...) transparency", so they may not have been lying. On the other hand, they may just have been lying.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Matching a transparency standard doesn't mean you're transparent. It means you successfully ticked boxes that should provide incentives for transparency.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    It's sad you're being downvoted, since your comment explain exactly what is going on.
- gowld 8y ago
  None of Dikkers' complains were transparency related. 1. Isn't it obvious whether a head is old? 2. How often are old heads removed from bodies without illness? 3. Dikkers doesn't believe in free-market commerce under a low-tax regime. That's his choice, but that means he shouldn't buy anything from an American or multinational corporation.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
This isn't the first time. There was a scandal with blood donors. Its illegal in the Netherlands to sell your blood but blood banks were importing blood from the US. Poor people shouldn't have to resort to selling their body.
- anvandare 8y ago
  Everyone who works is selling their body in some way. That's all work is. Anything else is rent-taking.
  - i_cannot_hack 8y ago
    They obviously meant selling physical parts of your body, not selling your time or expertise in the abstract sense.
    - anvandare 8y ago
      Blood replenishes though. It's not really a body part in that way, just like hair. (I don't know if regular donation has any long-term effects?) In that sense (no permanent impact) I'd see a greater problem with poverty driving people into working as miners or soldiers, than as blood donors. Semantics aside, the real problem is the (desperation of) poverty, not the results of it.
    - rnnr 8y ago
      So selling your hair is a problem too? Surrogate mothers? Do you even think that a poor person has the same quality of healthcare as a rich person has? All these bans just showcase bad manners and bad leftist ideology.
      - eru 8y ago
        Surrogacy is banned in most of Europe. See eg https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/13/where-in-europe-is-surrogacy-legal https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/13/where-in-europe-is-surro... (or just do some Googling). I don't have too much of an opinion either way, but the Dutch are more consistent than you seem to give them credit for. (Selling hair is legal though for all I know.)
Fnoord 8y ago
The Dutch government (such as UWV) is using US cloud providers from which they cannot be sure to get privacy from. The Netherlands should become more independent from the USA, given the mutual benefit of allies is becoming more thin.
- gowld 8y ago
  Even if you trust your cloud provider's intentions, you should never trust them with your privacy! If your cloud provider has access to your data, even if they never abuse it, all hackers have access as well. You should be uploading strongly encrypted data to the cloud, and assuming that anything decrypted in cloud could be viewed by an attacker.
- solomatov 8y ago
  Why do you think US cloud providers cannot give privacy?
  - mverwijs 8y ago
    Because he's an technically and politically informed citizen is my guess. Do you think they can give privacy?
  - user5994461 8y ago
    Because they operate in another nation and are puppets to their government. What do you think will happen when the NSA asks for full access or when the US becomes enemy with the Netherlands? Government and military cannot be outsourced overseas.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >military cannot be outsourced overseas A lot of countries buy arms from the US. In fact I might even hazard to guess that the US is the world's largest arms supplier. Perhaps you are right, maybe the missiles will not work if fired in the wrong direction.
      - 8y ago
Someone 8y ago
For details on US body brokers, read https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodies-brokers/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodi...
readhn 8y ago
How about some rabbis trafficking body parts? https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/07/the-arrests-of-rabbis-who-trafficked-body-parts-uncover-more-complicated-issues.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/07/the-arrests-of-rabb... "three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis were among more than 40 people arrested in New Jersey" Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken, Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats; Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith of Jersey City, also a Democrat; and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Ocean County.
gumby 8y ago
Apropos the US body market: there's a cartel that controls who gets body parts for research; life science startups find it tough to get human tissue for physiological research as the big companies and big research institutes end up with priority access. It's a strange omission as all the other resources (vivaria, lab equipment, chemicals, APIs etc are easily purchasable).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tartoran 8y ago
  True, I read an article about it a while back. Things are still the same
everybodyknows 8y ago
>Although the declared value of the head on the customs form was $25, the going rate for a human head in the U.S. market is currently around $500 Occam's razor explanation for this would be the harvesting of a little extra profit, by defrauding the customs tax system.

130 points by Jerry2 8y ago

>The hospitals told Reuters in recent weeks they made their decisions on ethical grounds. The move comes amid investigations by U.S. law enforcement into some so-called body brokers - companies that obtain the dead, often through donation, dissect them and sell the parts for profit. Is this what peak capitalism looks like?

NTDF9 8y ago
> Is this what peak capitalism looks like? Does money have more value than humans, life, kids, health, freedom? If yes, them yes. Oops, we're already there.
aylmao 8y ago
What really gets me is the “for profit”, especially since these are organ donors. They get their “merchandise” for free from the last goodwill of people. If not, apparently they’ll offer free cremation to families to convince them to agree to donating the organs— since they have to dispose of the corpse anyway this is probably just an expense they’d have to pay regardless. And then they sell this donation for profit. This is baffling.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > they’ll offer free cremation to families to convince them to agree to donating the organs— since they have to dispose of the corpse anyway this is probably just an expense they’d have to pay regardless. Um, no? If they aren't given custody of the body, they don't have to dispose of the corpse. The family would have to do that.
- freeflight 8y ago
  Which isn't that different to how many "charitable" organizations are actually for-profit organizations. Another example of this would be clothing donations. Most people donate clothing with the expectation that it will be given to the needy for free. When in reality, these second-hand clothes will usually be sold to traders who then retail them in developing countries [0], undercutting the domestic competition who can't compete with the massive influx of "free" clothing. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2015/feb/13/second-hand-clothes-charity-donations-africa https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable...
carbocation 8y ago
In the 1800s, people would murder people in order to sell their bodies to medical schools. (The term is “burking.”)

perfunctory 8y ago

> Although the declared value of the head on the customs form was $25, the going rate for a human head in the U.S. market is currently around $500, Reuters found

ryanlol 8y ago
So how does one actually buy a head? I need one for instagram.
- pizzazzaro 8y ago
  Im sure you can contact Medicure on some .onion website.
- tomcam 8y ago
  So many people struggling just to get a head these days

ekianjo 8y ago

> many brokers offer donor families free cremation in return for donating a body Wait, what do they cremate then if they get to keep the body??

aylmao 8y ago
Guessing this is after they take the “useful” organs out? My guess is not the whole body is necessary. Poor wording in my opinion.
- Flashtoo 8y ago
  Considering they sell heads and knees too, I'm not too sure how much is left once they're done.
Fnoord 8y ago
The body gets "scavenged", and then it gets cremated. The ash people get in an urn or necklace is very, very little amount of the total amount of ash. I carry a donor, and I want to be cremated as well (since I find it pathetic to use land after I passed away). If I die, I want whoever is left on Earth to benefit from my legacy. Mainly my family, but also others who are in need. I'd only be grateful if someone else would do the same for me if they'd pass away. This is why I support the modernisation that being a donor is opt-out in 2019 instead of opt-in (in NL). As far as I'm concerned, those who are donor get priority over those who are not donor, to avoid leeches (akin to people who don't vaccinate who benefit from those who do).
- eveningcoffee 8y ago
  I find this potentially very dangerous because this may motivate people who are supposed to save you to value the value of your body parts over the value of your life.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Not judging you [1] but I do find that a very misanthropic view of humankind. Those who save you are unable to know beforehand to whom your body parts are going to get used to. Doctors don't even know this beforehand either. Perhaps if you got very rare characteristics. I've had to make the decision in the past to give my father, who was already very ill, one of my kidneys. That's a very difficult and emotional decision to make... [1] I used to be not a registered donor because I didn't want anyone except my nearest family members to know about this. However, knowing about it right after death because it is in your wallet or registered on the internet can save lives.

ekianjo 8y ago

One paragraph: > From 2012 to 2016, according to manifest records reviewed by Reuters, MedCure shipped body parts valued at a total of more than $500,000 from the United States to the Netherlands. MedCure said it helps connect donors and scientific, research and medical entities. "We are an accredited and regulated institution and adhere to the best-in-class industry standards for safety ethics, and transparency," the company said in a statement to Reuters. Followed by: > Freek Dikkers, the professor of ear, nose and throat medicine at the AMC whose department bought the heads, said it was stopping after learning that the company solicits donors at hospices and old age homes and that its former owners earned millions from the trade. Dikkers said that was “unacceptable.” Something does not add up. How can you be a champion of "transparency" while your clients ignore (or pretend to ignore?) how you source the parts?

stareatgoats 8y ago
They said "best-in-class (...) transparency", so they may not have been lying. On the other hand, they may just have been lying.
viraptor 8y ago
Matching a transparency standard doesn't mean you're transparent. It means you successfully ticked boxes that should provide incentives for transparency.
- roel_v 8y ago
  It's sad you're being downvoted, since your comment explain exactly what is going on.
gowld 8y ago
None of Dikkers' complains were transparency related. 1. Isn't it obvious whether a head is old? 2. How often are old heads removed from bodies without illness? 3. Dikkers doesn't believe in free-market commerce under a low-tax regime. That's his choice, but that means he shouldn't buy anything from an American or multinational corporation.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

This isn't the first time. There was a scandal with blood donors. Its illegal in the Netherlands to sell your blood but blood banks were importing blood from the US. Poor people shouldn't have to resort to selling their body.

anvandare 8y ago
Everyone who works is selling their body in some way. That's all work is. Anything else is rent-taking.
- i_cannot_hack 8y ago
  They obviously meant selling physical parts of your body, not selling your time or expertise in the abstract sense.
  - anvandare 8y ago
    Blood replenishes though. It's not really a body part in that way, just like hair. (I don't know if regular donation has any long-term effects?) In that sense (no permanent impact) I'd see a greater problem with poverty driving people into working as miners or soldiers, than as blood donors. Semantics aside, the real problem is the (desperation of) poverty, not the results of it.
  - rnnr 8y ago
    So selling your hair is a problem too? Surrogate mothers? Do you even think that a poor person has the same quality of healthcare as a rich person has? All these bans just showcase bad manners and bad leftist ideology.
    - eru 8y ago
      Surrogacy is banned in most of Europe. See eg https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/13/where-in-europe-is-surrogacy-legal https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/13/where-in-europe-is-surro... (or just do some Googling). I don't have too much of an opinion either way, but the Dutch are more consistent than you seem to give them credit for. (Selling hair is legal though for all I know.)

Fnoord 8y ago

The Dutch government (such as UWV) is using US cloud providers from which they cannot be sure to get privacy from. The Netherlands should become more independent from the USA, given the mutual benefit of allies is becoming more thin.

gowld 8y ago
Even if you trust your cloud provider's intentions, you should never trust them with your privacy! If your cloud provider has access to your data, even if they never abuse it, all hackers have access as well. You should be uploading strongly encrypted data to the cloud, and assuming that anything decrypted in cloud could be viewed by an attacker.
solomatov 8y ago
Why do you think US cloud providers cannot give privacy?
- mverwijs 8y ago
  Because he's an technically and politically informed citizen is my guess. Do you think they can give privacy?
- user5994461 8y ago
  Because they operate in another nation and are puppets to their government. What do you think will happen when the NSA asks for full access or when the US becomes enemy with the Netherlands? Government and military cannot be outsourced overseas.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >military cannot be outsourced overseas A lot of countries buy arms from the US. In fact I might even hazard to guess that the US is the world's largest arms supplier. Perhaps you are right, maybe the missiles will not work if fired in the wrong direction.
    - 8y ago

Someone 8y ago

For details on US body brokers, read https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodies-brokers/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodi...

readhn 8y ago

How about some rabbis trafficking body parts? https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/07/the-arrests-of-rabbis-who-trafficked-body-parts-uncover-more-complicated-issues.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/07/the-arrests-of-rabb... "three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis were among more than 40 people arrested in New Jersey" Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken, Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats; Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith of Jersey City, also a Democrat; and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Ocean County.

gumby 8y ago

Apropos the US body market: there's a cartel that controls who gets body parts for research; life science startups find it tough to get human tissue for physiological research as the big companies and big research institutes end up with priority access. It's a strange omission as all the other resources (vivaria, lab equipment, chemicals, APIs etc are easily purchasable).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tartoran 8y ago
True, I read an article about it a while back. Things are still the same

everybodyknows 8y ago

>Although the declared value of the head on the customs form was $25, the going rate for a human head in the U.S. market is currently around $500 Occam's razor explanation for this would be the harvesting of a little extra profit, by defrauding the customs tax system.