Heart Doctor Pioneer Michael DeBakey Dies

Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous cardiovascular surgeon that pioneered the bypass surgery and inventor of many devices to help people with heart problems, has died at the age of 99 from natural causes at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX. In 1932, while he was still in medical school, he invented the roller pump, which later became the most important part of the heart-lung machine. The machine takes over the responsibilities of the heart and lungs during surgery. He was also the pioneer in the development of artificial hearts and heart pumps to help people waiting for transplants. He had helped to create more than 70 surgical instruments in his lifetime.

In the 1950s, DeBakey was the first person to perform the replacement of arterial aneurysms and obstructive lesions. He had developed bypass pumps and connections to replace parts of diseased arteries.

He had performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries in his career that lasted 70 years. His patients had included the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, Nicaraguan leader Violetta Chamorro, President Kennedy, President Johnson, and President Nixon. He was a consultant when Russian President Boris Yeltsin had surgery.

He served as the chairman of the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke during President Johnson’s administration. He had helped to establish the National Library of Medicine and was the author of more than 1,000 medical reports, papers, chapters, and books on surgery, medicine, and similar topics.

In 1953, he performed the first Dacron graft to be able to replace part of occluded arteries. In the 1960s he started coronary artery bypasses. In 1966, he was the first person to successfully use a partial artificial heart. In the 1990s, he helped to create the Michael E. DeBakey Heart Instititute at Hays Medical Center.

Funeral Directors in Philadelphia Steeling and Selling Body Parts

In Philadelphia, three funeral directors sold a total of 244 bodies for $1,000 each to a former oral surgeon who collected the bones, tissue, and skin from the bodies to be used for transplants. The transplants were used worldwide by unknowing medical patients.

A man named Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon who ran the Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., ran the operation with help of a team of “cutters” who stole the body parts. The funeral directors named Louis Garzone, Gerald Garzone, and James CcCafferty were arrested and have thousands of counts against them, including running a corrupt organization, forgery, and theft of body parts. Mastromarino plans to surrender and fight the charges he has against him. He says that he was victimized by the funeral directors and that they were in charge of getting consent and all he was suppose to do was take care of the tissue and send samples to the processors.

The families of the bodies thought that their loved ones were cremated, but the bodies were left unrefrigerated for days and sometimes put in alleys next to the funeral home until a cutter arrived. The funeral directors lied and forged death certificates to say that the bodies had died from heart attacks or blunt-force trauma. They also made up fake names for the bodies and forged family consent forms and the authorities have found the true identities of only 48 of the 244 bodies. They also reduced the ages of the bodies and changed their dates of death to make it look as if the parts were newer and fresher.

The parts were used to treat burns, replace broken bones, and provide for other medical needs. One woman is suing because she says that she received hepatitis by getting a transplant from one of the bodies that had HIV, hepatitis C, and cancer.