An employee has spoken out about ‘deplorable’ conditions in his workplace, having found three severed heads on his desk after reporting concerns.
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
Dale Wheatley has worked as a transportation coordinator at the Anatomical Gift Association (AGA) of Illinois for five years.
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The non-profit receives donations of people’s bodies after they have died, so that corpses can be used by future health professionals to study and learn.
“They learn the fundamentals of human biology while developing an appreciation for the form, function and beauty of the human body,” its website explains.
“Medical science professionals deepen their skill and understanding by intense study of the parts of the body.
“This training and study take place in the controlled environment of academic laboratories under the watchful supervision of PhDs of anatomy, who observe clear and long-standing ethical and scientific conventions.”
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Wheatley, who often deals with the bodies donated to the organisation, has spoken out about disturbing conditions he claims to have experienced at AGA, also saying he found three severed heads on his desk after trying to voice his concerns.
Speaking at a press conference with his attorney on Tuesday 6 June, he said: “The place is deplorable. It’s in shabby conditions.
“They’re sending donors back because of mold and rot, bugs.”
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Wheatley continued: “There's been instances where I've pulled donors from our storing room out of the racks, and rats have chewed through the bottom of the bag, through the feet.
“Sometimes we do brain removals, and they’re not sewn up correctly.
“There are people that are in our cooler now that need their body parts back and they have been there for three years or more. Right now at AGA, we have a number of cremains that need to go back to the families, over hundreds of cremains, sitting at our AGA right now.”
Wheatley said when he reported his concerns, he came into work to find sage burning and three severed heads sitting on a blue storage container at his desk last month.
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“My boss walked by, I asked him why the heads were at my desk,” he recalled.
“He said they need to get back with their bodies so we can send them to cremation. I said: ‘I understand that. Why are they at my desk?’ and he said: ‘I don't know Dale, there's a lot of strange things happening.’”
He believes what happened was in response to his complaints, and has since filed complaints with state and local authorities.
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According to Fox 32, a number of other people have also shared similar reports, with Casey Tilden, the anatomy lab manager at Northwestern University, saying she had sent an email the day before the heads appeared at Wheatley’s desk.
Tilden said bodies couldn’t be used because 'flies were crawling on the bodies, that the limbs contained mold and rot’ and that students had ‘become sick’ after being exposed to the bodies during the course of their studies.'
“There are a handful of donors that were recently delivered with feet and hands that show signs of decomposition,” Tilden said.
AGA Executive Vice President William O'Connor has denied that the organisation mistreats bodies and said some corpses come in ‘twisted’ or ‘emaciated’.
UNILAD has reached out to AGA for comment.
Topics: US News