Off The Record
He Thought Her Body Was Donated for Science — What Really Happened Is Unthinkable
After he discovered that his mother’s body, which he had donated to Alzheimer’s research, was actually used for military bomb testing, an Arizona man filed a lawsuit against a body donation company.
Each year, some 20,000 people in the US choose to give their remains to science for use in research and teaching, while others opt for a traditional burial or cremation.
The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act may regulate organ donation, yet the “vast gray and black market of dead human bodies” still exists.
FBI Special Agent Paul Micah Johnson, who has investigated the subject for around a decade, told CBS News in 2023, “Medical research and education, particularly education, is a vague term and it is not clearly defined even in the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.”
“The misleading of families across the industry is quite common.”
Doris Stauffer, Jim Stauffer’s mother, passed away in 2014 after battling Alzheimer’s disease. Stauffer gave his mother’s body to the Biological Resource Center (BRC) so that it may be used for illness research.
More than 20 bodies that were donated to BRC were instead used for US army explosion experiments, according to an investigative report by Reuters. Stauffer’s mother was one of them.
According to Reuters at the time, BRC, which is no longer in operation, marketed donated corpses like Doris’ for $5,893 each.
The outlet said, “When a body is donated, few states provide rules governing dismemberment or use, or offer any rights to a donor’s next of kin.”
“Bodies and parts can be bought, sold and leased, again and again. As a result, it can be difficult to track what becomes of the bodies of donors, let alone ensure that they are handled with dignity.”
BRC’s owner, Stephen Gore, entered a guilty plea to illegal control of an enterprise. According to KTVK, he was given a sentence of one year in prison and four years of probation.
Stauffer discussed the effects of making such a finding on himself and his family with KNXV after he filed the case.
He said, “I don’t see a pathway of ever getting past this. Every time there’s a memory, every time there’s a photograph you look at, there’s this ugly thing that happened just right there staring right at you.”
“[Stephen Gore] didn’t care about the families, he didn’t care about the people and he didn’t care about the memories. If I can be a little small part of his personal financial destruction, I don’t care.”
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