Annie Cheney - Body Brokers

Annie Cheney, writing in Australian Financial Review:

Although the US Food and Drug Administration does regulate tissue banks that procure and process cadaveric material for transplantation into living people, the federal government does not otherwise regulate the trade in cadavers, nor does any private agency, which means that no one knows exactly how many bodies were repurposed along the way.

Author of Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains, Annie Cheney is a New York-based journalist whose work has appeared in Harper’s and My Generation. She was awarded the 2005 Deadline Club Award for Best Feature Reporting by the Society of Professional Journalists. She has contributed stories to numerous public radio shows, including NPR’s "All Things Considered." Cheney lives in New York City.

Body Brokers is an investigative exposé of the lucrative business of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts, sometimes called "death care" world.

Her book points out the the government controls organs and tissue meant for transplantation, there is no federal oversight of cadavers. Dead human bodies are used in commercial seminars as a way to introduce new medical gadgetry, medical research studies and training courses and U.S. Army land-mine explosion tests. One corpse can can generate up to $10,000.

One reviewer said of the book: "Horrifying! Annie Cheney’s account is meticulously reported and compellingly written. She uses details to anchor scenes visually and then pushes the reader to visualize the entrepreneurial manipulation of corpses - their dismemberment, sale and use - as both gruesome and matter-of-fact. She backs up her narrative with research into history, literature and crime."

See also:
San Francisco Chronicle
ABC News