University of California Health is denying reports that human bodies donated for research and education at UC San Diego in La Jolla were sold to the Navy and the Israel Defense Forces for military medical training.
Such is a concern of La Jolla resident Kaia Gantzel. The body of her mother, Sari, was donated to UCSD after Sari’s death in 2021.
Gantzel said the idea of donated cadavers being provided for a military effort “feels like the opposite of medicine and doing good. It’s the last place we would want to be.”
Reports from student journalists at USC Annenberg Media and UCSD’s Guardian newspaper indicated that “a significant number” of cadavers in UC San Diego’s body donation program were moved to USC in Los Angeles. According to the reports, the bodies later were sold to the Navy, which then sold them to the IDF under a contract managed by USC. This also was discussed in the documentary series “Direct From With Dena Takruri” and reported on by KPBS.
However, Heather Harper, a spokeswoman for UC Health — which oversees six academic health centers including UCSD — countered those claims to the La Jolla Light this week.
“The remains loaned to USC are not being transferred or sold to the Israel Defense Forces,” Harper said.
UCSD’s body donation program, launched in 1968 to coincide with the opening of its medical school, uses human cadavers “for educational and scientific study … in a way consistent with the spirit of the good physician,” according to the university.
The donation program, which receives 450 to 500 bodies per year, is the second-largest of its kind in the country.
The USC Annenberg Media report states that UCSD “provides a significant number of bodies to USC that are sold for trainings with the Navy and the IDF” and that the partnership has been in effect since 2017. Since that time, the report says, “the Navy has paid USC more than $860,000 for at least 89 ‘fresh cadaver bodies,’ 32 of which were used specifically for IDF training at Los Angeles General Medical Center.”
Gantzel said her mother “was always an organ donor … and she had Alzheimer’s, so she wanted to plan ahead. So we started researching whether her brain could be used for Alzheimer’s research. One of the doctors we spoke to said the [UCSD] medical school accepts bodies, so the entire family was happy about that. … It felt wonderful to have done something like this for science and medical research.”
Gantzel contacted UCSD to see whether her mother’s body was one of those loaned to USC. She said this week that she has not received a response.
“We’re all upset to think her body wasn’t being used for medical science, because being used for war is the last thing she would have wanted,” Gantzel said. “I had been such an advocate for this program, and I feel tricked.”
Representatives of UCSD declined to comment to the Light and directed questions to UC Health.
Harper, the UC Health spokeswoman, said UC has a remains lending agreement with USC and that they are used in a course on medical education trauma surgical skills, conducted in a clinical setting.
“The USC course is attended by various licensed physicians and health care professionals, including those who serve in military medical corps,” Harper said. “The skills they practice are essential to all health care professionals: how to treat traumatic injuries, control bleeding and save lives. The course allows participants to build medical skills and does not involve use of weapons to inflict trauma.”
“As a public university, UC’s anatomical donation programs exist to advance education and research, focusing on health professional education, clinical training and research in service to public health,” Harper added. “This work is only possible due to the generous gift that each donor chooses to make in an extraordinary act of service. UC honors and respects those gifts and is committed to ensuring that all donations are used ethically and with dignity.”
Once internal needs are met, she said, UC “may loan donor remains to clinical training programs that meet UC’s standards for scientific and educational merit. … UC does not sell donated anatomical remains, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”
Loaned remains from UC San Diego are returned there after studies are completed, she said.
Information about the UCSD program says it “accepts donations of human bodies for use by various institutions and individuals for education and research purposes” and has goals of “assisting the education of current and future physicians, other health care practitioners, anatomists, forensic scientists and mortuary technicians, [and] contributing to scientific research that will assist in development of procedures and/or products with the intent of improving the human condition in biomedical and scientific contexts.”
UCSD “will exclusively determine the manner in which a donated body and any data, including images, derived from the donation will be utilized,” according to the university.
Once a donated cadaver can no longer be used by UCSD, the remains are cremated and scattered or interred in a manner consistent with state law, the university says. In 2021, UCSD unveiled a memorial site to honor donors who have participated in the program.
If UCSD cannot accept a body for a non-medical reason, “we will make every attempt to transfer the donation to another location within the UC system,” UCSD states. ♦
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