Most people who decide to donate their bodies to universities and other institutions for medical research assume that their remains will be used to advance science and reduce human suffering.
In the vast majority of cases, those individuals are correct, but not always.
Recent revelations about how some donated bodies were used have caused concern among medical researchers and have led one professional group to consider demanding federal legislation to regulate the handling of donated cadavers.
Scientists and others fear that any whiff of scandal or the misuse of such cadavers could cause people to hesitate donating their bodies, hampering research and medical education.
The two recent incidents point to the problem.
In one, the director of the Willed Body Program at UCLA is accused of selling donated cadavers, allegedly with the help of an accomplice.
In the other, the Army obtained through a broker bodies that had been given to Tulane University in New Orleans and blew them up in land mine experiments.
Experts say such incidents are extremely rare.
“It is very much the exception,” said Donald Tortorice, a law professor at Virginia’s College of William and Mary. “It is unethical and illegal.”
Still, there have been repeated cases of illegal and unethical behavior in the handling of donated cadavers, such as the sale for profit of body parts or organs.
“If anything is a scandal it is that these situations have been repeated and nothing is being done to correct the situation,” said Dr. Todd Olson, a professor of anatomy at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.
Donate carefully, doctor says
Olson, who is also a member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists, emphasized the importance of making donations only to state agencies or reputable universities.
Across the U.S., the sale of human organs, bodies and body parts is illegal. Millions of Americans do choose to be organ donors, primarily by placing small stickers on driver’s licenses. Those involved in the business of dealing with the dead and dying are quick to point to a distinction between bequeathing a body to science and donating organs upon death.
“For heaven’s sake, tell people not to take off those [donor] stickers,” said Kyle Nash, a resident thanatologist at the University of Chicago. Thanatology is the study of death, especially its medical, psychological and social aspects.
Body donation is extremely complicated for a variety of reasons.
The donations are regulated by state laws, and the rules differ from state to state. In Illinois the process is centralized: All donated bodies go to a facility in Chicago and then are distributed to the state’s medical schools. Donors sign a standard contract.
In almost all cases, individuals wishing to will their bodies for scientific research are required to sign a contract that gives the receiving institution control over how the bodies will be used.
“When you donate your body to the University of Tennessee, it becomes the property of the university,” said Bill Bass, the retired founder of the university’s Anthropological Research Facility. The facility played a central role in Patricia Cornwell’s novel “The Body Farm,” a murder mystery.
The Tennessee program shows how some cadavers are used by researchers.
In this case, donated bodies are left exposed in a field or buried in the same field–a site where the university once burned its trash. The goal is to produce skeletons for research projects. Along the way, researchers study the decomposition of the bodies–gases emitted, rate of decay and other phenomena. It is a relatively new area of study.
The information provided to potential donors by the university is blunt in explaining how the bodies will be used.
Most donated bodies are used in more conventional study. In medical schools, mainly first-year students in anatomy classes use cadavers. Research institutions and businesses use a smaller number of bodies and body parts.
Benefit to medicine
For example, medical equipment company Johnson & Johnson seeks body parts to help develop new surgical devices. Physicians use body parts to explore surgical techniques, sometimes with the aim of refining new procedures.
But there are concerns about the sale of bodies or questionable use of cadavers in inappropriate ways.
Discussing the Army’s land mine experiment, Dr. Robert McCuskey, president of the American Association of Anatomists, said that was “not what people who donated to Tulane expected.”
McCuskey’s organization is part of the Coalition of American Societies of Anatomy, which is working on guidelines for the ethical handling of cadavers and discussing seeking federal legislation to regulate the industry that deals in donated bodies.
“These bodies cross state lines, and so I think it could be the prerogative of the federal government,” McCuskey said.
Concerns about brokers
McCuskey and other experts say they are also concerned about private companies acting as brokers between universities and other parties seeking bodies for various reasons.
Such brokers generally are organized as not-for-profit agencies and say their charges cover the cost of processing and transporting the remains. But medical experts say they are worried about how some of these brokers conduct business.
In the Tulane case, the university used a New York organization called National Anatomical Service to take excess donated cadavers and, the university expected, transfer them to another school or research institution. Instead the bodies ended up in a minefield.
National Anatomical Service reportedly paid Tulane $1,000 for each of seven cadavers. The university refuses to confirm or deny that suggested price. But the Army has confirmed that it paid just under $30,000 for the seven cadavers.
“That looks like a profit to me,” said one medical expert involved in the procurement and use of cadavers.
