Pennsylvania man accused of stealing human skin from hospital

(Reuters) – A Pennsylvania skin-graft salesman is facing charges that he stole $350,000 worth of human skin from a Philadelphia hospital over a period of nearly two years, police said on Friday. Gary Dudek, 54, is accused of stealing sheets of lab-grown skin intended for use in skin-graft surgeries from Mercy Philadelphia Hospital between November 2011 and July 2013, a local police spokeswoman said. The hospital said in a statement that it called the police after an audit revealed “illegal or improper behavior” from a vendor supplying the skin, which is artificially grown in a laboratory out of human skin cells. Eugene Tinari, Dudek’s lawyer, said his client had done “nothing that amounts to criminality.” He called the charges draconian and said they were better dealt with in a civil rather than criminal case.