Is Nothing Sacred?

Throughout most of my adult life 8.45 on a Sunday morning was the time to switch on my radio and listen to Alistair Cooke's Letter from America. It must be well over thirty years that I almost ritualised the act of switching on the radio just after the Godspot on Radio 4 to catch up with the easy style of Mr Cooke giving us insights into life, both political and ordinary, in the USA. He had a knack of making the most mundane sound interesting and helping you to understand the human side of American life instead of the "plastic" Yanks which we all see on TV and in the cinema (I refuse to use the Americanisation "movies"). Even though I never met him I feel he was one of my friends and there are many - on both sides of the pond - who feel the same. He was an institution, a sane, calming voice in a topsy-turvy world.
The news came today that, before cremation, some of Alistair's bones were surgically removed after his death and sold to a criminal ring for seven thousand measly dollars - not much more than the cost of a small fitted bathroom in my shop. How sick can you get? Is America so rife with greed that it can't respect the feelings of his family? Does money rule everything in the "land of the free"?
An irony that wouldn't have escaped Alistair's quick wit was that his bones were cancerous. Anybody who received tissue from this source via a transplant would be receiving not life but long-term suffering and painful death. Thus the perpetrators of this awful crime have, in effect, murdered any recipients of this tissue. Even if they are caught and successfully prosecuted it would be almost impossible to prove who else died through their greed.
Why does money mean more than life? Is this America, land of the free or is it just that greed conquers all? If it is the latter then it throws into contention everything that America does in the world - Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and all the rest. Why doesn't someone over there stop this farce?
Or perhaps they're all too busy making money.
Once again - nuff said.