A $4 million dollar has been filed against the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner over a brain belonging to a deceased husband of a Central Islip widow.
Mozelle Purifoy is claiming that the brain of her late husband, Tom Purifoy, was removed at Mount Sinai Medical Center and taken from his body following an autopsy in 2006. The brain was then donated, without consent from her or her husband, and had since been lost to Ms. Purifoy’s knowledge.
The widow is seeking $4 million in damages for pain and emotional distress.
Ms. Purifoy also states that she buried her husband without his brain and it was in the days after Mr. Purifoy’s funeral before she received organ donation forms in the mail. Ms. Purifoy further states that she did not authorize anyone to take the organ as a donation.
Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Mental Disorders and a doctor were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.