Thought this was interesting:
http://www.comcast.net/news/national/index.jsp?cat=DOMESTIC&fn=/2006/01/20/308194.html
http://www.comcast.net/news/national/index.jsp?cat=DOMESTIC&fn=/2006/01/20/308194.html
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It's a conflict of interest to earn money for your private business at the same time you are being paid by your government employer for starters.scandi said:OMG Thanks Tipper for posting this. We all know him so well from his commentary on the Scott Peterson case! I never knew he had such skeletons in his closet. He must be doing again what he did back in the early 80's that is considered against the law.
Can anyone tell a layman like me what he is doing that is exactly wrong? Thanks.
Scandi
Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht traded corpses of people whose next of kin could not be found to a local college in exchange for laboratory space for his private business, federal prosecutors said today. Several bodies a month -- for at least a year -- were given to the unnamed college, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said this morning after a federal grand indicted Wecht on 84 counts, including mail and wire fraud, theft of honest services and theft from an organization receiving federal funds.
"Probably the most significant aspect of this fraud is that Cyril Wecht used employees paid for by the county for his personal benefit," Buchanan said.
Wecht, 74, overbilled clients, including Westmoreland, Fayette and Greene counties, for which he performed pathology services, according to the indictment. For example, Wecht billed those counties for travel expenses that had already been paid for by Allegheny County taxpayers, the indictment states.
And earn a LOT of money too, it seems.Seeker said:It's a conflict of interest to earn money for your private business at the same time you are being paid by your government employer for starters.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/pmupdate/s_415595.html
Not necessarily. People can will their body to science and designate a particular school, or research facility to be the recipient of their remains.scandi said:Looks like he is in deep doo-doo!
How could such an intelligent man like this do something so blatently against the law? Amazing! Trading bodies for a service.
We do have someone here at WS who either is a coroner or works for a mortuary - she worked in the place where Elvis' body was readied for buriel I think. It would be interesting to hear from this poster. I'm wondering if this is normal practice for coroners - does this practice go on regularly in that business? How do medical schools get their bodies? I know already they must pay for them. LOL
Scandi
scandi said:How do medical schools get their bodies? I know already they must pay for them. Scandi
Either way, why would Wecht think they were his bodies to trade to benefit his private company?Nehemiah said:The school my son attends uses a lot of homeless peoples' bodies.
Seeker,Seeker said:Even though he offered his "expert" opinion over and over on the case, Dr Wecht wasn't actually JBR's coroner...John Meyer was.
I don't think the problem is in the use of cadavers per se. If the charges are true he converted an asset he gained access to as a state employee to benefit his private company. We'll have to wait and see what the evidence is.Jayelles said:[...]
Not sure about the bodies thing. There are two distinct arguments here. On one hand, there is a human rights issue - who give anyone the right to trade in cadavers? On the other hand, it seems that a lot of good may have come out of the dirty deeds in terms of medical advancement. I don't know what the laws are about this. In the UK, Burke and Hare were the notorious "bodysnatcher" who obtained fresh corpses which they sold to medical schools for research. Awful for the families but how many of us benefited from the medical research?
[...]
BlueCrab said:The whole Wecht inictment issue reeks of jealousy and politics at its worse. Dr. Wecht doesn't appear to have violated the law at all. Even the college denies it traded anything for the cadavers -- a direct rebuttal of what the DA considers his main charge against Wecht. The goal of the indictment is an attempt to politically smear someone who holds an elected office as coroner and also has a perfectly legal private practice in the same field.
BlueCrab