It could have ended three years ago, when a leaky FedEx box containing an arm and legs turned up in Missouri. Or years before that, when a judge convicted Philip Joe Guyett Jr. of embezzling money from the sale of a corpse that belonged to a medical school in California.
But nothing stopped Guyett from moving steadily eastward, mining gold from the lucrative body-parts trade. Federal officials shut down this flesh-and-bone prospector in Raleigh, N.C., this month, saying his products posed a danger to public health.
By then, he had supplied hundreds of tissues for knee repairs, spine surgeries and other medical procedures around the nation, many of them allegedly procured in an unsterile funeral-home embalming room.
Despite his conviction, he twice was able to register companies with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to provide tissue for transplants.
“Here’s a convicted felon who could pretty much go anywhere in the country and open a tissue-recovery agency,” complained one tissue banker who refused to work with him, Ken Richardson of Nevada Donor Network.
Guyett, 38, denies any wrongdoing and insists he went out of business on his own accord some months back. No one yet knows how many people received tissue he supplied or what risks they may face. Companies have been quietly recalling his products from doctors and hospitals since early July.
Many who work in this field are outraged by the problem, the second big tissue scandal in a year, following one that led to criminal charges in New Jersey. But an Associated Press investigation this year found that lax oversight of the billion-dollar industry allows such situations to occur and puts the public at risk.
Oversight is up to the FDA, but it relies on broad-brush rules. The American Association of Tissue Banks has strict standards, but the FDA does not require companies to abide by those rules.
“In this business, what really rules is: Do you have the goods?” said Annie Cheney, author of the book “Body Brokers.”
