Five Chicago hospitals advised patients yesterday that they may have received transplants harvested by Brooklyn body-part snatchers.
Officials said at least 42 transplant recipients in the Chicago area had been affected.
The five hospitals have all done business with Biotissue Technologies – a company under investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office on suspicion of selling body parts taken from funeral homes.
“It’s wholly distressing that anyone involved in any part of this process would break the law and bypass protocol designed for utmost patient safety,” said Kelly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, which offered free disease testing for its 17 patients who received the suspect tissue.
A grand jury is still investigating allegations that the head of Biotissue, Michael Mastromarino, worked with Joseph Nicelli, an embalmer at a Sheepshead Bay funeral home, in a scam to cut up cadavers before burial and sell off the parts.
Meanwhile, sources told the Post that investigators from the Food and Drug Administration are contacting medical facilities along the East Coast that may have done business with Biotissue.
A subpoena of Biotissue’s records found that Mastromarino was doing business with funeral homes in upstate New York, New Jersey and Maryland, the source said.
No charges have been filed.
Investigators believe hundreds of corpses, including that of “Masterpiece Theater” host Alistair Cooke, were carved up without permission in funeral parlors citywide to remove bones, skin and tendons.
Some body parts came from elderly people and perhaps victims of infectious diseases, and their paperwork may have been doctored to say they had been younger and healthier.
Federal officials say there is a small risk of infection from diseased body parts.
Several lawsuits have been filed against Mastromarino and Biotissue, both by angry tissue recipients and by people whose relatives’ parts have been harvested.
Mario Gallucci, Mastromarino’s lawyer, told The Post that he believes his client will not be indicted and the suits will be dismissed because his client was not in charge of the records and “no one’s proven that anyone’s gotten any diseased tissue.”
With Post Wire Services