A man from Arizona sued a body-donation company after shockingly discovering his mother's body he donated to Alzheimer's research was used for military bomb testing instead.
While some choose a traditional burial or to be cremated after they die, around 20,000 people in the US each year decide to donate their bodies to science so they can be used for research and educational purposes.
Organ donation through the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act may provide regulation, but there remains 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 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.
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"The misleading of families across the industry is quite common."
Jim Stauffer's mother, Doris, died back in 2014 after living with Alzheimer's. Stauffer donated his mother's body to Biological Resource Center (BRC) for research purposes looking into the disease.
In an investigative piece, Reuters discovered that more than 20 bodies donated to BRC were instead used for US army blast experiments. One of them happened to be Stauffer's mom.
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BRC, which is no longer an operational business, sold donated bodies like Doris' for $5,893 each, Reuters reported at the time.
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."
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Stephen Gore, the owner of BRC, pleaded guilty to illegal control of an enterprise, with KTVK reporting he was sentenced to one year of differed jail time and a period of four years probation.
After filing the lawsuit, Stauffer spoke to KNXV of the impact making such a discovery had on himself and his family.
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."
Callum Jones