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 The
fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur
Rathburn’s warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in
their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included
human brain tissue.
Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers
by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and
his trial is set for January.
How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with
them is unclear. Rathburn’s lawyers did not respond to requests for
comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public
in his case mention the fetuses.
“This needs to be reviewed,” said U.S. Representative Marsha
Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a
special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue.
Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the
photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.
In four of the photos, a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit
uses forceps to lift a different fetus from the brownish liquid. In
three other photos, a marker that includes a government evidence
identification number lies beside a fetus.
“The actions depicted in these photos are an insult to human
dignity,” said U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee. A Republican from Virginia, Goodlatte
said that if individuals “violate federal laws and traffic in body
parts of unborn children for monetary gain,” they should be “held
accountable.”
Blackburn said the discoveries in Rathburn’s warehouse raise
questions about the practices of body brokers across America. Such
brokers take cadavers donated to science, dismember them and sell
them for parts, typically for use in medical research and education.
The multimillion-dollar industry has been built largely on the poor,
who donate their bodies in return for a free cremation of leftover
body parts.
The buying and selling of cadavers and other body parts — with the
exception of organs used in transplants — is legal and virtually
unregulated in America. But trading in fetal tissue violates U.S.
law.
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In most states, including Michigan, public health authorities are
not required to regularly inspect body broker facilities. As a
result, it’s impossible to know whether body brokers who deal in
adult donors are acquiring and profiting from fetuses.
Blackburn’s call for action came in response to a Reuters series
that exposed abuses in the human body trade and what Blackburn
called “lax oversight” and “lax enforcement” of the industry.
Photos from inside Rathburn’s warehouse offered a stark example of
government failures to police the industry. They include images of
rotting human heads, some floating face up in a plastic cooler. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been investigating
Rathburn and other body brokers, declined to comment.
Blackburn said she found other Reuters stories about the body trade
disturbing.
As part of the news agency’s examination of the industry, for
example, a Reuters reporter was able to purchase two human heads and
a cervical spine from Restore Life USA, a broker based in
Blackburn’s home state of Tennessee. The deals were struck after
just a few emails, at a cost of $900 plus shipping.
“It is sickening” how easily Restore Life sold the parts to Reuters,
Blackburn said.
Told of Blackburn's concerns, Restore Life owner James Byrd said his
company has "invited her to tour our facility and to review the
policy and procedures we have in place."
(Shiffman reported from Washington. Grow reported from Atlanta.
Edited by Blake Morrison.)
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