I wonder if the transplant recipients will feel an incredible urge to run out and buy DVDs of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Seriously, using tissue from a cancer patient is a bad idea and I hope that the tissue companies can track down everyone who is now carrying about a bit of Mr. Cooke.

Tissue Services for the Discerning
Affiliated with the Manette Clinic

"Discretion and Efficiency Since 1775"

(Odd. I wasn't sure what Burke's first name was, but 'William' was a total surprise to me.)

You know, I am having a "Larry Niven Was Right" moment. I don't get that many of those.

As for the corpse-robbers who took Mr Cooke's bones, my initial response was "have they no shame?" -- then I read the article and realized the answer was self-evident.

(Although, come to think of it, a past episode of Law and Order *did* feature body snatchers, but I forget what they were doing with the remains.)

Why don't we hear about mass quantities of immunosuppressant drugs being produced?

I'm guessing that people in China who would receive transplants are well up in the Party hierarchy--they want the best stuff. No livers that have been in a refrigerator for three days, thank you.

This doesn't smell right.

That's an unknown number of people who got skin grafts, tooth implants, et cetera, who instead of having their lives saved or improved may die of it.

If the D.A.s and/or U.S. attorneys in question are on the ball and track things thoroughly, the body-snatchers may spend the rest of their lives in prison: we're looking at an unknown but potentially large number of cases of (I am not a lawyer) manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, or possibly murder by depraved indifference.

The Cooke angle is what suddenly made this story news outside the New York area. But even having read previous news stories about this case, when I first saw the headline about "Cooke's bones stolen" I assumed it was some weird souvenir or relic collector, not part of this crime ring.

They would. Rag paper -- that produced from used rags, as collected by rag men -- is an excellent way to make the stuff, and will last a very long time. Sulfite, which means there's no rag content at all, is what falls apart. There are several components to paper survival, including acid content and exposure to light, but "rag" is not an insult to the product.

Mass-audience paperbacks were (and mostly still are) considered an item for the short term, to be read, maybe passed along a couple of times, and then discarded. Like, you know, American cars of the postwar era.

And, looking at that old story and this new one, there's medical people who are endangering their patients. Time and distance alone make me think that buying from China would be medically unwise did those guys ever sell anything? This isn't quite as extravagant a scenario as the stolen-kidney urban legend, but...

Well, maybe not since 1940, but certainly since the 1980s. And certainly not lethal draws. However, the prisoners' blood was not identified as coming from a suspect population, even though the incidence of diseases such as hepatitis are more common amongst prisoners, nor was the donor tested and screened before the blood draw. It wasn't identified as blood which had been taken from prisoners, either, blood which sometimes had been taken against their will -- unless you accept the argument that it is a meaningful choice to choose between giving blood or disciplinary action. Penal disciplinary action...isn't pretty.

Burke, Hare, and . . .Mastromarino?

Actually, Burke and Hare never dug anyone up. That would have required creeping round burying grounds at night with wooden shovels and getting all grubby. Apart from their first corpse, which they diverted from burial, they took the much easier tactic of getting people drunk and smothering them.

Or, to put it in modern business speak, they constructed a vertically integrated supply chain that removed middlemen (natural death and burial) from the process to create a more efficient delivery model.

Nor, if anyone is interested, did they get caught when the prostitute they murdered was recognised by students who knew she had been alive and well very recently. She did have clients in the dissection room, but Dr Knox hushed the matter up. They were caught when one of their lodgers, having lost her stockings, looked under the bed...

Even a stopped clock is an awful boring hack.

I have no use for the idea that predictiveness makes SF useful, but the "stopped clock" analogy really doesn't apply. I'll buy the "if you shoot enough bullets in the general direction of a target, one may well hit," but the clock isn't trying to say something about what time it is, or even what time it might be.

Yes, there is a solution. But it is politically unacceptable to the USA's ruling class (and, by extension, to the rest of their economic empire).

She's angry about the situation, and also angry that the hospital contacted her only by letter. Apparently they'd sent enough solicitations in the last several months that she almost didn't open the letter. The hospital claims to have tried to call her, and found that both numbers they had on file for her had been disconnected.

In her case, the transplant tissue had come via a Florida company that was supposed to have tested for contagious diseases, but the hospital felt it best to warn affected patients.

There are already lawsuits against the company that bought the tissue from the grave-robbers.

no, but it makes a better starting point for snarking at Niven than the hundred bullets analogy does.

The situation was unbelievably corrupt. They were actually getting kickbacks from the prisoners for the privilege of selling blood.

What astonishes me about the graverobbers in Brooklyn is that they were in Brooklyn--weren't they at all concerned about a back-alley malpractice suit?*

*Large relatives with baseball bats and poor attitudes.

That's what you get for getting your hip replacement done by a cheap-ass HMO.

I don't know that story--can you give me a pointer?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/12/23/body.snatching.ap/index.html

It's illegal to pay money for "human tissues" in Australia, which is supposed to stop such-like trading, I'm not sure if that does really work.

One would hope that a Brooklyn Malpractice Suit could be applied to all those responsible, but that isn't all that civilised. Hasn't a pack of lawyers formed yet?

Wikipedia notes that the decision to dispense with the host segment came shortly after the departure of MT's major sponsor. One suspects that speed was not, after all, the main consideration.

There's lots of right-wing noise around the issue; a good starting place is here:

http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/25news.html