Talk about not paying the freight. Four embalmed heads and 40 partial skulls that belong to Medtronic failed to make it aboard a Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas last week because the packages did not have the correct paperwork,The Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes.
Apparently, the heads were simply not labeled or packaged properly, an airline spokesman tells the paper, without saying how heads or skulls are usually wrapped. The airline, in other words, needs more of a head's up. In any event, local authorities were contacted. For the curious, the specimens were headed for Medtronic's Fort Worth office, but are now resting in a county coroner's office.
Not surprisingly, a Medtronic spokesman tells the paper that skulls and heads are used to train and educate neurosurgeons in "neurosurgical and temporal bone ear, nose and throat procedures," and that shipments are usually sent commercially. Even in this age of concern over what drug and device makers are allowed to offer physicians, a certain comfort can be had knowing docs do not have to bring their own embalmed heads to training. Meanwhile, Medtronic execs will have to put their heads together to avoid a repeat.
22 Comments
This is an interesting story indeed. I spent over 25 years in logistics and am curious myself as to how the documentation worked to insure the shipment too.
The common carrier business can be interesting at times and the classification and description on the way bill must not have been too specific I am guessing. Just as we have codes in healthcare, there are codes there too for billing, etc. One big item I had issue with was a client shipping whale sperm, boy that was a project to figure out what code to use for that client, one of the oddities like this one.
As usual, Ed's skulls as a reporter keep him ahead of the pack.
Good ones, JiM and Ed!
Somehow, I think five of 'em -- in a duffle-bag. . . sounds like a bad movie.
Oh wait -- that was (a bad movie). . .
Namaste
You are a complete moron when it comes to reading newspapers and regurgitating "news." Medtronic ordered the specimens from a supplier. It's the supplier who didn't label the boxes appropriately. Your motto is clearly not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
This item was in the morning paper the day after you published this, Ed. For some reason it reminded me of this story. See what you think!
http://content.comicskingdom.net/Pardon_My_Planet/Pardon_My_Planet.20100619_large.gif
Dear MedDeviceMan,
Thanks for your note. And I appreciate your point, although I'm not clear why you appear so upset. I didn't take Medtronic to task for this mishap. I was simply having a little fun, starting with the headline (ahem) and the rest of the text.
Yes, you're correct that the supplier made the mistake. But I didn't write that Medtronic shipped the heads and skulls, or that Medtronic employees had incorrectly shipped these items. However, they do belong to the company, which remains responsible for them and must ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. Hence, the Medtronic spokesman is instructed to offer an explanation.
As for regurgitating, as you put it, the approach on this blog has always been to offer a mix of original work - reportage, commentary, guest columns, interviews and, sometimes, video clips - and aggregation. Some aggregation apppears once each day in the form of a morning post with a stack of headlines. Other regular length, aggregated items arrive depending upon the news of the moment. Sometimes these are supplemented with a dash of background, additional reporting or links to pertinent documents or background stories.
In this case, it was a simple item that linked directly to the original media source and again, since it was a rather unusual development, I chose to use a few puns. As Archie Bunker used to say: "No intense offended."
I hope this helps and thanks for stopping by, ed
Dear John English,
Thanks for the laugh. If I drove like that, I'd be heading for trouble.
Best ed
I think MedDeviceMan's underlying complaint is that Ed's content isn't "free enough" for him. [Heh!]
I'd venture to guess he resents spending his hard-earned. . . nuthin', to get all this content.
um. . . Okay, then.
Just one other note -- I apparently misplaced three heads, in my dufflebag (rather lame joke), above.
So. . . sue me, MedDeviceMan.
[I guess it could happen to anyone -- 5 v. 8.]
As proof that "nothing exceeds, like excess"(!), I've modified and photoshopped the movie poster (under my last link), to give it a more tailored William Hawkins-ey, Medtronic Chairman-ey feel. So, you likey?
It is a freeware parody image, for wide and unrestricted re-distribution.
Enjoy, one and all -- especially MedDeviceMan(!) -- Namaste
Medtronics execs are not using their heads. They could save a ton of money by implementing an in-house ‘grow your own’ specimen procurement program.
Ding! Ring the Bell!
This is all part of a larger problem. When I took Gross Anatomy in 1970, there was more than an ample supply of donated cadavers and body parts to meet everyone's needs. Over the years there has been a drastic dropoff in these types of donations to the extent that universities and commercial interests have had to result to purchasing organs and cadavers, with all of the attendant problems. In my school days there would have been no need for interstate shipments, bacause all of the needs could have been satisfied locally.
Note to self: do not to donate my head to science for research.
Though this story can't be any worse than E.Fuller Torrey harvesting brains for his collection of brains of ppl diagnosed with Schizophrenia and stealing them, illegally at that!
http://www.kirotv.com/investigations/4882584/detail.html
And all of this is BEFORE we start talking about the sorry fate that has befallen the noggin of "The Splendid Splinter" -- Ted Williams.
The truth is almost always far stranger. [I concur w/ previous poster's note to self.]
Namaste
MedDevive person,
How and at what frequency does Medtronic audit the labels against a QA/QC standard or standards?
~ M. Black
They can have their way with me after I’m gone.
Until then, they need to behave themselves. See
http://www.margaretsoltan.com/?p=20313
This brings back such good memories; we all had heads to work on when I was in school (I'd better not say where). I used to carry my head all over and liked to watch his beard grow (actually his skin shrunk).
One funny guy snuck an arm onto the NYC subway during rush hour and attached it to the holder thing above the seats --when everyone left there was an arm hanging there.
A pathology resident I heard about lost a breast he was carrying from one hospital to another in a Chinese food container. His bosses weren't happy, neither was the poor soul expecting egg foo young I expect.
Good times.
Marcy
Lighten up Medtronics guy.
Good story, Marcy. Personally, I would still do today what I did in the late 1970's when I was a grad student collaborating with a Pathology Dept. in a university 800 miles away, where we had to ship biological specimens for research purposes over 20 times. In each case, I personally packed the containers in a secure fashion, labeled them myself, and personally drove them to the Fedex terminal at the airport. I waited and watched the shipment being loaded on the plane, and only left when that plane was in the sky. My counterpart at the other end personally supervised the unloading of the shipment, and personally transported the containers to his lab. We never shipped over a weekend, where there might be a delay. Since the dry ice packing only good for 48 hours, we only shipped when there was anticipation of good flying weather. By taking these precautions we had zero problems.
I would still follow these routines even today, notwithstanding bar-coded tracking systems and RFID chips. Of course it didn't hurt that the success of my dissertation research was also partially dependent on the shipments arriving safely.
Wow. May your own corpse be treated with the same contempt as expressed in some of the posts here.
If you don't pack 'em properly, heads will roll! (Sorry I am late to the party, but couldn't resist!)