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Funeral home horrors put spotlight on regulations
State-to-state rules vary from annual inspections to no inspections at all
W funeralhome
In a July 12 file photo, the Swanson Funeral Home is seen on Martin Luther King Avenue in Flint, Mich. The state has shut down the funeral home, saying maggots were in a garage where unrefrigerated bodies were being stored. - photo by Associated Press
DETROIT — The stench of decomposing flesh pulsed from a funeral home into a Michigan neighborhood as maggots wriggled along the garage floor near cardboard-boxed corpses stacked along walls.The dead can't complain, but on occasion — through rot — they scream for judgment against the living entrusted with prompt and solemn cremation or burial. Of 10 bodies found in the unrefrigerated garage at Swanson Funeral Home in Flint last year, one was not embalmed and had been there about six weeks. The Michigan attorney general filed complaints against the business, but it remained open until July — after inspectors again found bodies in the unrefrigerated garage.The Flint business is one of several funeral homes in the U.S. in recent years that have been forced to close after similarly gruesome discoveries, usually only after someone has complained to local authorities.
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