In Raleigh, N.C., a tissue and bone supplier's products posed such a danger to public health that the FDA closed the business down. According to the news, the owner supplied hundreds of tissues for knee repairs, spine surgeries and other medical procedures around the nation, many of them allegedly procured in an unsterile funeral home embalming room. Phillip Joe Guyett is the alleged culprit and his company is Donor Referral Services. Companies have been recalling DRS products from doctors and hospitals since early July.
Is this guy bad news? Guyett was an administrator at the willed body program at Western University in Pomona, Calif., in 1999. He was later charged with selling a cadaver to another school and keeping the $1,100 payment. He pleaded no contest to a felony and embezzlement. He was fined and sentenced in April 2000.
Guyett later showed up in Las Vegas, registering Donor Referral Services with the FDA as a human tissue business. He later moved on to N.C. According to reports there, Guyett also pursued a related business of recycling titanium screws, implants and pins left over after cremation.
The FDA shut him down. It its order, the FDA claims that Guyett altered paperwork on the health history and age of at least five dead donors, eliminating mention of factors like cancer and drug use that might make them ineligible.
