Bec Oakes
A woman got the shock of her life after she donated her late husband's body to science, only for it to be blown up by the army.
Before the end of our lives, we all need to make one big decision. What will happen to our bodies when we die?
Some choose a traditional burial, while others want to be cremated.
And each year, 20,000 people in the US decide to donate their bodies to science so they can be used for research and education.
Advert
However, while 47 out of 50 states regulate body and organ donation through the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, there's a 'vast gray and black market of dead human bodies'.
FBI Special Agent Paul Micah Johnson, who has investigated the subject for around a decade, told CBS News last year: "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."
Steve Hansen had always wanted to donate his organs when he passed away.
But, when he died in 2012 from cirrhosis of the liver, doctors said his organs weren’t healthy enough for donation.
At the time, hospice workers suggested to his wife Jill that she donate his body to science.
She told CBS: "What I envisioned was him being in some medical facility. I just thought, what a great candidate for them to learn about the results of alcoholism and what it does to a body."
However, this wasn't the case.
After transportation to the Biological Research Center in Arizona, Steve's body was sold to the Department of Defense.
"They told me specifically that my husband had been used as a crash test dummy in a simulated Humvee explosion," his wife explained.
His body was sold by BRC founder Stephen Gore without Jill’s consent, where it was used for a load of military and ballistics tests, which court documents stated resulted in 'the complete mutilation and desecration of the donor's body'.
She continued: "I was devastated. I would've never done it if I had known. I just kept telling him I was sorry."
When the FBI raided Gore’s warehouse in 2014, some needed trauma therapy due to the disturbing and graphic sights they were exposed to.
Gore was sentenced to a year in prison with four years on parole.
As for Johnson, he believes that while the body donation industry is vital for scientific research, there’s a lot of work left to do to regain public trust.
He said: "It would be nice if there was one playbook for everyone.
"And so that would ideally be federal and it would cover everyone that deals with human body parts — for-profit, non-profit, all of them under one set of rules."