it's funny with the new website setup, at times when i click on stuff, if comes up with ... "redefining beauty with one ho ..... and the actual statement being redefining beauty one hot chick at a time. sorry struck me as funny ..!! Evan Gofuserect Gilgamoshus
Dr. James Forsell, senior vice president of Tissue Banks International, discusses the details of...
Scandal Rocks Human Tissue Industry
Sunday, June 11, 2006 12:27 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By TOM HAYS
NEW YORK (AP) As a seasoned "cutter," Lee Cruceta thought he knew when it was safe to harvest human tissue from the dead for transplants to the living and when it wasn't.
This time, it wasn't.
The man's body stretched out in front of Cruceta in the back room of a Manhattan funeral home after hours one day last summer had yellowish skin. His vacant eyes had the same sickly cast a sign of jaundice. Cruceta telephoned his boss, Michael Mastromarino, to tell him the bad news: The body had failed inspection.
"We always went by the rule that if you come across a body and you say to yourself, 'I don't want any part of that person in my body,' you rule the case out," Cruceta said.
But Mastromarino, by Cruceta's account, surprised him. Stay put, he said.
The boss came down, checked out the body himself and declared that "everything looked fine."
"I was overruled," Cruceta said.
Out came the surgical tools. The extraction of flesh and bone began.
This is, again, Cruceta's account. He, like Mastromarino, faces criminal charges in a scandal so grotesque that it reads like a real-life sequel to "Frankenstein."
It was Mastromarino who built a business that took from the dead and gave to the living. There are many legitimate businesses that do this, but authorities say Mastromarino's company was not one of them.
Authorities say Biomedical Tissue Services secretly carved up hundreds of cadavers among them, that of the British-born host of "Masterpiece Theatre," Alistair Cooke without the families of the deceased knowing about it. They then peddled the pieces on the lucrative non-organ body parts market.
Even scarier: They say BTS doctored paperwork to hide the inconvenient fact that some of the dead were too old and diseased to be donors. As a result, they say, the market was flooded with potentially tainted tissue, and an untold number of patients across the country may have received infections along with their dental implants and hip replacements.
To all the world, Michael Mastromarino appeared to be a man of character and accomplishment: College athlete. Oral surgeon. Family man. Author. Multimillionaire.
There were rumors. Cruceta, a 33-year-old nurse who worked closely with Mastromarino for three years, recalled asking his boss if it was true that he'd had run-ins with the authorities.
"He told me it was all lies," he said.
There were several malpractice lawsuits an occupational hazard for a doctor tackling tough cases, his lawyer says. But dental board records reveal other troubles.
Mastromarino was arrested in July 2000 for being under the influence of drugs and in possession of a hypodermic needle and Demerol, according to the documents. His lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said he became addicted to painkillers while being treated for a back problem.
The criminal charge was eventually dropped, but because his urine tested positive for controlled substances cocaine and another painkiller, Meperidine he agreed to surrender his dentistry license for six months and enter rehab. He was later caught practicing without a license a second offense resulting in a four-year suspension from the profession.
But by then, he had begun another career.
Using his contacts with companies that produce material for dental implants, Mastromarino opened BTS in Fort Lee, N.J., in 2001.
In 2002, Mastromarino sought licensing to do business in New York. As the company's chief officer, he was asked on an application to the state Department of Health whether he "had charges sustained of administrative violations of local, state or federal laws, rules and regulations ... concerning the provisions of health care."
"No," he answered.
The license was granted.
Femurs. Tendons. Heart valves. Swatches of skin from the thighs, stomach and back.
The body parts, though no longer of any value to their owners, became big business for Mastromarino. His lawyer said he was among the first in the industry to figure out that one way to meet the high demand for donated human tissue traditionally procured in the controlled environment of hospitals was to turn to funeral homes.
Deals were cut with funeral directors in New York City, Rochester, N.Y., Philadelphia and New Jersey: BTS would pay a $1,000 "facility fee" to harvest body parts on their premises.
Three-man teams were dispatched to mortuaries. Two workers would extract the parts. A third would bag them and put them on ice until they could be stored in a freezer at BTS headquarters.
Internal documents from BTS suggest the company had, at least on paper, a strict set of rules for obtaining signed consent for the procedures. A script instructed interviewers to tell family members, "We are about to proceed with the medical social history questionnaire. I have about 40 questions and this interview should take about 20 minutes."
Sample question: "Did the deceased have a tattoo, ear or other body piercing or acupuncture in the past 12 months in which shared instruments are known to have been used?"
Unfortunately, it seems that no questions were asked in hundreds of cases.
Family members have told investigators no one sought permission for body-part donations. The signatures at the bottom of the questionnaires, they said, were forged.
Mastromarino, through his lawyer, has blamed funeral home directors, insisting it was their job to get consent. The directors say it was the other way around.
As early as September 2003, the FDA detected trouble at BTS.
In a routine inspection, an investigator found evidence the company had failed to properly sterilize its equipment, and had no records of how it had disposed of tissue that failed screening for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.
But nothing came of it. The FDA backed off after Mastromarino insisted he had voluntarily cleaned up his operation. In a letter, he told officials he would "look forward to your agency revisiting our facility."
In November 2004, New York City Police Department Detective Patricia O'Brien responded to a complaint from a funeral director in Brooklyn. The director claimed the parlor's previous owner had stolen down payments for funerals.
But once inside the funeral parlor, she sensed something far more sinister.
The detective was surprised to find an embalming room that looked more like an operating room, with a steel table and bright overhead lights. When she reviewed old files, she found the names of biomedical companies. She later Googled the names and learned each was involved in tissue transplants.
O'Brien had gone into the investigation thinking she was dealing strictly with "a financial situation," she said. "I had no idea. I was shocked."
The NYPD's Major Case Squad widened the investigation, interviewing the relatives of 1,077 dead people whose bodies were harvested for body parts. Only one said permission was given.
Meanwhile, the director of a Denver blood center, Dr. Michael Bauer, had been hired by several tissue banks to review medical charts of donors to make sure tissue was safe.
On the evening of Sept. 28, 2005, while flipping through charts at his desk, he spotted a notation on a woman's chart saying she had chronic bronchitis. As a precaution, he picked up the phone and dialed the number listed for her doctor.
"All I wanted to know was whether the doctor thought that might be an acute infection," meaning something present when she died, Bauer recalled. If so, the germ might still be in her tissue and make it unsuitable for transplantation.
A business answered, one "so unrelated to medicine that it didn't feel right to me."
So he picked up another chart and called another doctor.
Then another. And another.
Each time, no doctor answered. In each case, it appeared the charts were falsified.
"I got through the first 10 and that's when all the hair on the back of my neck stood up," Bauer said.
The case, said the prosecutor, is like a "cheap horror movie."
Authorities released photos of exhumed corpses that were boned below the waist like a freshly caught fish. The defendants, they alleged, had made a crude attempt to cover their tracks by sewing PVC pipe back into the bodies in time for open-casket wakes.
Lawsuits filed by implant patients accuse BTS of exposing plaintiffs to hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Families of the dead have sued, too.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration shut down BTS amid its own investigation. The agency said it had uncovered evidence the firm failed to screen for contaminated tissue. Parts were recovered from people who had diseases which may have been "exclusionary," an FDA report said.
Death certificates in the company's files, the FDA said, were at odds with those on file with the state: The company's version made people younger than they actually were, and altered the cause and time of the deaths.
Those responsible "were just some irresponsible crooks who were doing this and slipped through the cracks," said Dr. Stuart Youngner, a Case Western Reserve University medical ethicist and head of the ethics committee at Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, a large nonprofit tissue bank. "The good tissue banks ... don't do that."
Cruceta is free on $500,000 bond. His name is on papers indicating that he was the one who conducted interviews with family members of the deceased interviews that authorities say never took place. He insists he signed only because he was instructed to do so; prosecutors don't believe him.
Mastromarino, 42, remains free on $1.5 million bail after pleading not guilty to body stealing, forgery, grand larceny and other counts. Through his lawyer, he refused requests for interviews by The Associated Press.
If convicted, he faces as much as 25 years in prison.
Associated Press Writer Adam Goldman and AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report.
Readers who want to share information or experiences related to this topic may contact reporters by e-mailing tissuebanks@ap.org.
.............................................................................................................................
Robertson Says He Really Leg-Pressed a Ton
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 9:29 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By SONJA BARISIC
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says it is the God's honest truth he did, indeed, once leg-press a ton when he was almost 73 and had prostate cancer, and he still regularly lifts up to 1,200 pounds with his legs.
But he acknowledged that the way he leg-presses would not be legal in a bodybuilding competition.
The "700 Club" host's feat is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach. But sports experts questioned the assertion in recent weeks, with one noting that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.
A spokeswoman recently released a photo she said showed Robertson leg-pressing 2,000 pounds on Feb. 1, 2003. Robertson had surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland later that month and turned 73 that March.
"I did it one time, one rep, but I had built up to it for about three years," Robertson insisted on Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, the first time he has spoken with a reporter since the leg-press brouhaha.
Robertson said his doctor encouraged him to leg-press weights to strengthen his bad knees.
But he said he did the 2,000-pound lift on an incline leg press with the machine's brake on, which means he did not have to lift the weight the whole way.
"When the professionals do it, they take the brake off and let the weight come all the way down on them. And if you don't have a lot of help, you've got a Volkswagen sitting on your hips. I didn't do that," he said.
CBN's Web site has a video showing Robertson leg-pressing 1,000 pounds. The Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a free recipe for the shake, with ingredients including soy and whey protein, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.
Robertson also has licensed his name to Columbus, Ohio-based Basic Organics Inc., which makes a similar product called Pat's Diet Shake.
"We're selling the thing like crazy. There are thousands of people who want to get it. They think the shake had something to do with my ability to lift weights, and I don't think it did," he said, chuckling.
Robertson said he takes about 45 vitamins and minerals daily, abstains from sweets and soft drinks, eats lot of salads, fruits and nuts and rides horses, plays golf and works out.
Convicted Killer Seeks Sex-Change
Thursday, June 8, 2006 6:36 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By DENISE LAVOIE
BOSTON (AP) A convicted murderer who claims he is a woman trapped inside a man's body testified Thursday that he feels distressed "every waking moment" because prison officials refuse to pay for a sex-change operation.
Michelle Kosilek, who was Robert Kosilek when he was convicted of killing his wife in 1990, is suing to force the state to pay for the surgery.
Kosilek, who wore makeup and a feminine sweater with jeans to court, cried while describing to a judge how he grew up feeling like a "circus freak."
If state prison officials refuse to allow the procedure, "I would not want to continue existing like this," said Kosilek, who has twice attempted suicide. "The greatest loss is the dying I do inside a little bit every day."
Kosilek, 57, is serving a life sentence at an all-male prison in Norfolk.
Kosilek sued the state in 2000, claiming that its refusal to provide the surgery violated the Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2002, federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to receive medical treatment for gender-identity disorder, but stopped short of ordering a sex-change operation.
Since then, Kosilek has received female hormone treatments, laser hair removal and psychotherapy. Kosilek has also been given some access to female undergarments and makeup
But Kosilek said those treatments have not been enough and asked Wolf to hear the case instead of a jury.
Prison officials have said allowing the operation would create security concerns if Kosilek returns as a woman to the all-male prison and is targeted for assault by the male inmates. If transferred to a women's prison, Kosilek could pose a risk to female inmates, officials said.
Neither side has given an estimate for how much the surgery would cost.
..................................................................................
people seem to be afraid of tomorrow, Tuesday, 6-6-06, which they reduce to 666, which means absolutely nothing, but i guess it is good for a laugh!! so let's all go to Hell Michigan!! ha ha ha ha!!
Hell, Mich., Heats Up for 6-6-6 Party
Sunday, June 4, 2006 7:04 AM EDT
The Associated Press
HELL, Mich. (AP) They're planning a hot time in Hell on Tuesday. The day bears the date of 6-6-06, or abbreviated as 666 a number that carries hellish significance. And there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that the day will go unnoticed in the unincorporated hamlet 60 miles west of Detroit.
Nobody is more fired up than John Colone, the town's self-styled mayor and owner of a souvenir shop.
"I've got `666' T-shirts and mugs. I'm only ordering 666 (of the items) so once they're gone, that's it," said Colone, also known as Odum Plenty. "Everyone who comes will get a letter of authenticity saying you've celebrated June 6, 2006, in Hell."
Most of Colone's wares will sell for $6.66, including deeds to one square inch of Hell.
Live entertainment and a costume contest are planned. The Gates of Hell should be installed at a children's play area in time for the festivities.
"They're 8 feet tall and 5 foot wide and each gate looks like flames, and when they're closed, it's a devil's head," Colone told The Detroit News for a Saturday story.
Mike "Smitty" Hickey, owner of the Dam Site Inn, wasn't sure what kind of clientele would show up Tuesday.
"We're all about having fun here. I don't think we're going to get the cult crowd, the devil worshippers or anything like that," said Hickey, whose bar's signature concoction is the Bloody Devil, a variant of the Bloody Mary.
Colone, meanwhile, has been in touch with radio stations as far away as San Diego and Seattle that are raffling off trips to Hell in honor of 6-6-6.
The 666 revelry is just the latest chapter in the town's storied history of publicity stunts, said Jason LeTeff, one of its 72 year-round residents or, as the mayor calls them, Hellions or Hell-billies. But LeTeff wasn't particularly enthused.
"Now, here I am living in Hell, taking my kids to church and trying to teach them the right things and the town where we live is having a 6-6-6 party," he said.
According to the town's semiofficial Web site, there are two leading theories about how Hell got its name.
The first holds that a pair of German travelers stepped out of a stagecoach one sunny afternoon in the 1830s, and one said to the other, "So schoene hell" roughly translated as, "So bright and beautiful." Their comments were overheard by some locals and the name stuck.
The second holds that George Reeves was asked after Michigan gained statehood what he thought the town he helped settle should be called, and reportedly replied, "I don't care, you can name it Hell if you want to." The name became official on Oct. 13, 1841.
Dr. James Forsell, senior vice president of Tissue Banks International, discusses the details of...
Scandal Rocks Human Tissue Industry
Sunday, June 11, 2006 12:27 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By TOM HAYS
NEW YORK (AP) As a seasoned "cutter," Lee Cruceta thought he knew when it was safe to harvest human tissue from the dead for transplants to the living and when it wasn't.
This time, it wasn't.
The man's body stretched out in front of Cruceta in the back room of a Manhattan funeral home after hours one day last summer had yellowish skin. His vacant eyes had the same sickly cast a sign of jaundice. Cruceta telephoned his boss, Michael Mastromarino, to tell him the bad news: The body had failed inspection.
"We always went by the rule that if you come across a body and you say to yourself, 'I don't want any part of that person in my body,' you rule the case out," Cruceta said.
But Mastromarino, by Cruceta's account, surprised him. Stay put, he said.
The boss came down, checked out the body himself and declared that "everything looked fine."
"I was overruled," Cruceta said.
Out came the surgical tools. The extraction of flesh and bone began.
This is, again, Cruceta's account. He, like Mastromarino, faces criminal charges in a scandal so grotesque that it reads like a real-life sequel to "Frankenstein."
It was Mastromarino who built a business that took from the dead and gave to the living. There are many legitimate businesses that do this, but authorities say Mastromarino's company was not one of them.
Authorities say Biomedical Tissue Services secretly carved up hundreds of cadavers among them, that of the British-born host of "Masterpiece Theatre," Alistair Cooke without the families of the deceased knowing about it. They then peddled the pieces on the lucrative non-organ body parts market.
Even scarier: They say BTS doctored paperwork to hide the inconvenient fact that some of the dead were too old and diseased to be donors. As a result, they say, the market was flooded with potentially tainted tissue, and an untold number of patients across the country may have received infections along with their dental implants and hip replacements.
To all the world, Michael Mastromarino appeared to be a man of character and accomplishment: College athlete. Oral surgeon. Family man. Author. Multimillionaire.
There were rumors. Cruceta, a 33-year-old nurse who worked closely with Mastromarino for three years, recalled asking his boss if it was true that he'd had run-ins with the authorities.
"He told me it was all lies," he said.
There were several malpractice lawsuits an occupational hazard for a doctor tackling tough cases, his lawyer says. But dental board records reveal other troubles.
Mastromarino was arrested in July 2000 for being under the influence of drugs and in possession of a hypodermic needle and Demerol, according to the documents. His lawyer, Mario Gallucci, said he became addicted to painkillers while being treated for a back problem.
The criminal charge was eventually dropped, but because his urine tested positive for controlled substances cocaine and another painkiller, Meperidine he agreed to surrender his dentistry license for six months and enter rehab. He was later caught practicing without a license a second offense resulting in a four-year suspension from the profession.
But by then, he had begun another career.
Using his contacts with companies that produce material for dental implants, Mastromarino opened BTS in Fort Lee, N.J., in 2001.
In 2002, Mastromarino sought licensing to do business in New York. As the company's chief officer, he was asked on an application to the state Department of Health whether he "had charges sustained of administrative violations of local, state or federal laws, rules and regulations ... concerning the provisions of health care."
"No," he answered.
The license was granted.
Femurs. Tendons. Heart valves. Swatches of skin from the thighs, stomach and back.
The body parts, though no longer of any value to their owners, became big business for Mastromarino. His lawyer said he was among the first in the industry to figure out that one way to meet the high demand for donated human tissue traditionally procured in the controlled environment of hospitals was to turn to funeral homes.
Deals were cut with funeral directors in New York City, Rochester, N.Y., Philadelphia and New Jersey: BTS would pay a $1,000 "facility fee" to harvest body parts on their premises.
Three-man teams were dispatched to mortuaries. Two workers would extract the parts. A third would bag them and put them on ice until they could be stored in a freezer at BTS headquarters.
Internal documents from BTS suggest the company had, at least on paper, a strict set of rules for obtaining signed consent for the procedures. A script instructed interviewers to tell family members, "We are about to proceed with the medical social history questionnaire. I have about 40 questions and this interview should take about 20 minutes."
Sample question: "Did the deceased have a tattoo, ear or other body piercing or acupuncture in the past 12 months in which shared instruments are known to have been used?"
Unfortunately, it seems that no questions were asked in hundreds of cases.
Family members have told investigators no one sought permission for body-part donations. The signatures at the bottom of the questionnaires, they said, were forged.
Mastromarino, through his lawyer, has blamed funeral home directors, insisting it was their job to get consent. The directors say it was the other way around.
As early as September 2003, the FDA detected trouble at BTS.
In a routine inspection, an investigator found evidence the company had failed to properly sterilize its equipment, and had no records of how it had disposed of tissue that failed screening for HIV, hepatitis and syphilis.
But nothing came of it. The FDA backed off after Mastromarino insisted he had voluntarily cleaned up his operation. In a letter, he told officials he would "look forward to your agency revisiting our facility."
In November 2004, New York City Police Department Detective Patricia O'Brien responded to a complaint from a funeral director in Brooklyn. The director claimed the parlor's previous owner had stolen down payments for funerals.
But once inside the funeral parlor, she sensed something far more sinister.
The detective was surprised to find an embalming room that looked more like an operating room, with a steel table and bright overhead lights. When she reviewed old files, she found the names of biomedical companies. She later Googled the names and learned each was involved in tissue transplants.
O'Brien had gone into the investigation thinking she was dealing strictly with "a financial situation," she said. "I had no idea. I was shocked."
The NYPD's Major Case Squad widened the investigation, interviewing the relatives of 1,077 dead people whose bodies were harvested for body parts. Only one said permission was given.
Meanwhile, the director of a Denver blood center, Dr. Michael Bauer, had been hired by several tissue banks to review medical charts of donors to make sure tissue was safe.
On the evening of Sept. 28, 2005, while flipping through charts at his desk, he spotted a notation on a woman's chart saying she had chronic bronchitis. As a precaution, he picked up the phone and dialed the number listed for her doctor.
"All I wanted to know was whether the doctor thought that might be an acute infection," meaning something present when she died, Bauer recalled. If so, the germ might still be in her tissue and make it unsuitable for transplantation.
A business answered, one "so unrelated to medicine that it didn't feel right to me."
So he picked up another chart and called another doctor.
Then another. And another.
Each time, no doctor answered. In each case, it appeared the charts were falsified.
"I got through the first 10 and that's when all the hair on the back of my neck stood up," Bauer said.
The case, said the prosecutor, is like a "cheap horror movie."
Authorities released photos of exhumed corpses that were boned below the waist like a freshly caught fish. The defendants, they alleged, had made a crude attempt to cover their tracks by sewing PVC pipe back into the bodies in time for open-casket wakes.
Lawsuits filed by implant patients accuse BTS of exposing plaintiffs to hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Families of the dead have sued, too.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration shut down BTS amid its own investigation. The agency said it had uncovered evidence the firm failed to screen for contaminated tissue. Parts were recovered from people who had diseases which may have been "exclusionary," an FDA report said.
Death certificates in the company's files, the FDA said, were at odds with those on file with the state: The company's version made people younger than they actually were, and altered the cause and time of the deaths.
Those responsible "were just some irresponsible crooks who were doing this and slipped through the cracks," said Dr. Stuart Youngner, a Case Western Reserve University medical ethicist and head of the ethics committee at Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, a large nonprofit tissue bank. "The good tissue banks ... don't do that."
Cruceta is free on $500,000 bond. His name is on papers indicating that he was the one who conducted interviews with family members of the deceased interviews that authorities say never took place. He insists he signed only because he was instructed to do so; prosecutors don't believe him.
Mastromarino, 42, remains free on $1.5 million bail after pleading not guilty to body stealing, forgery, grand larceny and other counts. Through his lawyer, he refused requests for interviews by The Associated Press.
If convicted, he faces as much as 25 years in prison.
Associated Press Writer Adam Goldman and AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report.
Readers who want to share information or experiences related to this topic may contact reporters by e-mailing tissuebanks@ap.org.
.............................................................................................................................
Robertson Says He Really Leg-Pressed a Ton
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 9:29 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By SONJA BARISIC
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says it is the God's honest truth he did, indeed, once leg-press a ton when he was almost 73 and had prostate cancer, and he still regularly lifts up to 1,200 pounds with his legs.
But he acknowledged that the way he leg-presses would not be legal in a bodybuilding competition.
The "700 Club" host's feat is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach. But sports experts questioned the assertion in recent weeks, with one noting that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.
A spokeswoman recently released a photo she said showed Robertson leg-pressing 2,000 pounds on Feb. 1, 2003. Robertson had surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland later that month and turned 73 that March.
"I did it one time, one rep, but I had built up to it for about three years," Robertson insisted on Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, the first time he has spoken with a reporter since the leg-press brouhaha.
Robertson said his doctor encouraged him to leg-press weights to strengthen his bad knees.
But he said he did the 2,000-pound lift on an incline leg press with the machine's brake on, which means he did not have to lift the weight the whole way.
"When the professionals do it, they take the brake off and let the weight come all the way down on them. And if you don't have a lot of help, you've got a Volkswagen sitting on your hips. I didn't do that," he said.
CBN's Web site has a video showing Robertson leg-pressing 1,000 pounds. The Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a free recipe for the shake, with ingredients including soy and whey protein, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.
Robertson also has licensed his name to Columbus, Ohio-based Basic Organics Inc., which makes a similar product called Pat's Diet Shake.
"We're selling the thing like crazy. There are thousands of people who want to get it. They think the shake had something to do with my ability to lift weights, and I don't think it did," he said, chuckling.
Robertson said he takes about 45 vitamins and minerals daily, abstains from sweets and soft drinks, eats lot of salads, fruits and nuts and rides horses, plays golf and works out.
Convicted Killer Seeks Sex-Change
Thursday, June 8, 2006 6:36 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By DENISE LAVOIE
BOSTON (AP) A convicted murderer who claims he is a woman trapped inside a man's body testified Thursday that he feels distressed "every waking moment" because prison officials refuse to pay for a sex-change operation.
Michelle Kosilek, who was Robert Kosilek when he was convicted of killing his wife in 1990, is suing to force the state to pay for the surgery.
Kosilek, who wore makeup and a feminine sweater with jeans to court, cried while describing to a judge how he grew up feeling like a "circus freak."
If state prison officials refuse to allow the procedure, "I would not want to continue existing like this," said Kosilek, who has twice attempted suicide. "The greatest loss is the dying I do inside a little bit every day."
Kosilek, 57, is serving a life sentence at an all-male prison in Norfolk.
Kosilek sued the state in 2000, claiming that its refusal to provide the surgery violated the Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 2002, federal Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to receive medical treatment for gender-identity disorder, but stopped short of ordering a sex-change operation.
Since then, Kosilek has received female hormone treatments, laser hair removal and psychotherapy. Kosilek has also been given some access to female undergarments and makeup
But Kosilek said those treatments have not been enough and asked Wolf to hear the case instead of a jury.
Prison officials have said allowing the operation would create security concerns if Kosilek returns as a woman to the all-male prison and is targeted for assault by the male inmates. If transferred to a women's prison, Kosilek could pose a risk to female inmates, officials said.
Neither side has given an estimate for how much the surgery would cost.
..................................................................................
people seem to be afraid of tomorrow, Tuesday, 6-6-06, which they reduce to 666, which means absolutely nothing, but i guess it is good for a laugh!! so let's all go to Hell Michigan!! ha ha ha ha!!
Hell, Mich., Heats Up for 6-6-6 Party
Sunday, June 4, 2006 7:04 AM EDT
The Associated Press
HELL, Mich. (AP) They're planning a hot time in Hell on Tuesday. The day bears the date of 6-6-06, or abbreviated as 666 a number that carries hellish significance. And there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that the day will go unnoticed in the unincorporated hamlet 60 miles west of Detroit.
Nobody is more fired up than John Colone, the town's self-styled mayor and owner of a souvenir shop.
"I've got `666' T-shirts and mugs. I'm only ordering 666 (of the items) so once they're gone, that's it," said Colone, also known as Odum Plenty. "Everyone who comes will get a letter of authenticity saying you've celebrated June 6, 2006, in Hell."
Most of Colone's wares will sell for $6.66, including deeds to one square inch of Hell.
Live entertainment and a costume contest are planned. The Gates of Hell should be installed at a children's play area in time for the festivities.
"They're 8 feet tall and 5 foot wide and each gate looks like flames, and when they're closed, it's a devil's head," Colone told The Detroit News for a Saturday story.
Mike "Smitty" Hickey, owner of the Dam Site Inn, wasn't sure what kind of clientele would show up Tuesday.
"We're all about having fun here. I don't think we're going to get the cult crowd, the devil worshippers or anything like that," said Hickey, whose bar's signature concoction is the Bloody Devil, a variant of the Bloody Mary.
Colone, meanwhile, has been in touch with radio stations as far away as San Diego and Seattle that are raffling off trips to Hell in honor of 6-6-6.
The 666 revelry is just the latest chapter in the town's storied history of publicity stunts, said Jason LeTeff, one of its 72 year-round residents or, as the mayor calls them, Hellions or Hell-billies. But LeTeff wasn't particularly enthused.
"Now, here I am living in Hell, taking my kids to church and trying to teach them the right things and the town where we live is having a 6-6-6 party," he said.
According to the town's semiofficial Web site, there are two leading theories about how Hell got its name.
The first holds that a pair of German travelers stepped out of a stagecoach one sunny afternoon in the 1830s, and one said to the other, "So schoene hell" roughly translated as, "So bright and beautiful." Their comments were overheard by some locals and the name stuck.
The second holds that George Reeves was asked after Michigan gained statehood what he thought the town he helped settle should be called, and reportedly replied, "I don't care, you can name it Hell if you want to." The name became official on Oct. 13, 1841.
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