Excerpt: 'Body Brokers' by Annie Cheney
March 9, 2006 — -- Forget respect for the dead. Journalist Annie Cheney exposes the underground market -- and the very lucrative business -- of procuring, buying, and selling human cadavers and body parts in her new book, "Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains." Cheney's tales will haunt you, as well as make you vow to protect your loved ones even after they die.
Below is an excerpt for from her book.
Chapter One: Wilderness
Joyce Zamazanuk knew that her son was dying. She knew it when the nurses quietly wheeled Jim to a private room on the seventh floor of the hospital in San Diego. His new room had a bed, a metal chair, and an oxygen tube, but little else. Outside, few visitors wandered the halls. A hush hung over the nursing station. Joyce thought, This must be where they bring the sick patients to die.
Six days in the hospital had done little to help Jim. AIDS had ravaged his body. The tumor that engulfed his lungs appeared larger in each new CAT scan. Always slender, Jim Farrelly, 45, was now reedlike beneath the cotton sheets and blankets. His thick brown hair had thinned to a soft, downy fur. He had trouble talking. Death by asphyxiation was certain.
Joyce wondered what awaited her beloved son: Would he feel pain in the moment of his passing? How much longer before he left her?
Joyce had been just 17 years old when Jim, her third son, was born; the two had always been close. Even as a baby, Jim was gentle in his manners and feminine in his tastes. He wanted to do whatever his mother did. Unlike his macho brothers, Jim would learn to cook and to sew. Later, when his sister was born, he styled her hair and embroidered flowers on her clothing. At school, the other children called him all the usual names: sissy and mama's boy.
But Jim was a scrapper, tougher, his mother always said, than any of his tough brothers. When they lost Jim's father, it was Jim who stepped in and took care of Joyce. Jim planned his father's funeral. He bought the Christmas presents. He was a comfort to his mother. When he grew up and settled in San Diego, Joyce often came to stay. She and Jim shared their sorrows and secrets.
AIDS was one secret Jim had tried to keep. When he was diagnosed with HIV in 1994, he lied to his mother and said, "The doctor just found a polyp. Nothing for you to worry about." Joyce was relieved. But within a year, the virus had progressed to full-blown AIDS.
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