Coroner Frank Minyard and the undergound trafficking of body parts

coroner Frank Minyard body parts

New Orleans has been the murder capital of the world for years. Coroner Frank Minyard is the fun loving some what  odd trumpet playing dude.

Minyard has seen thousands of dead bodies come through his morgue , , but what happens to some of  those bodies?. Victims of gun shot

wounds, stabbings, homicide may amaze you. He has been the coroner since 1974 when he was elected with a host of other Dixiecrats like  singing DA Harry Connick . Back in the

1990's Frank Minyard managed to dodge several questionable practices that probably should have resulted in a  Louisiana Attorney General investigation. His good friend at the time, DA Harry Connick decided not to try his music loving buddy and a federal investigation never resulted. Only a slap on the wrist from the FDA. Coroner Frank Minyard admitted to providing body parts from dead bodies to a company by the name

of Southern Transplant .The problem is the victims relatives never gave authorization. Minyard said T.J. Terry Picou of Southern Transplant paid one worker in his office $10 per corpse to take the bone and corneas, paid clerks to call

when bodies arrived, and paid at least one pathologist Dr  William Newmann with LSU.$10 for a corpses cornea. That sounds pretty cheap, may be i should start a cornea eye bank because they sell for thousands everyplace else.

They received thousands of corneas from the Coroner's office in the 90's. Cornea transplants cost on average of $8000 and there are about 45,000 done in the U.S every year so its a fairly lucrative business to say the least.

I feel these types of practices are unethical and probably border on illegal. Louisiana law says that

coroners must make a reasonable effort to contact the dead person's relatives. Minyard stated he has verbal agreement with a few companies to allow them to contact relatives themselves.

Transplant banks  sell kidneys for up to $20,000 to hospitals and individuals and some of the surgeries can reach into the hundreds of thousands.

A single dead body yields raw materials worth tens of thousands of dollars to businesses whose stock is traded on Wall Street and to nonprofit agencies that obtain the parts for them, Records and interviews show. Nowhere in the country are grieving families told that their gifts fuel a fast-growing industry predicted to hit $1 billion within three years.

Hate Crimes Against Humanity says trade in body parts has sparked questions from donor families and medical ethicists about ties between companies that sell body parts and nonprofit organizations that solicit them. The tissue banks act as middlemen for their corporate partners.

Families are led to believe they are giving the gift of life. They are not told that skin goes to enlarge penises or smooth out wrinkles, or that executives of tissue banks nonprofit groups that obtain body parts routinely earn six-figure salaries. The products are rarely life-saving as advertised.

"I thought I was donating to a nonprofit. I didn't know I was lining someone's pocket," said one donor.

Some of this is very disturbing to me and I plan on revealing some other very heart breaking findings when I look at the relationships these body parts banks have with the coroner's office staff

Three Part Series:New Orleans Underground Body Part Trafficking To be continued.......Read Latest on DA Leon Cannizzaro 

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