Technologies of the Human Corpse by John Troyer

Author:John Troyer [Troyer, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Human corpse; corpse; dead body; death; dying; technology; embalming; death photography; postmortem photography; postmortem; AIDS; HIV; HIV/AIDS; Body Worlds; Gunther von Hagens; body brokers; organ trafficking; human tissue trafficking; funeral industry; funeral homes; funeral directors; disposal technology; biopolitics; necropolitics; thanatopolitics; bioethics; science and technology studies; happy death movement; death positivity; transhumanism; death law; patent law; funeral planning; grief; bereavement; Foucault; Agamben; Catherine Waldby; Judith Butler; Centre for Death and Society
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Henry Reid, Ernest Nelson, and the UCLA Medical School

In March 2004, Henry Reid, the overseer and central administrator of the University of California at Los Angeles’s Willed Body Program, was arrested for providing human cadavers to another man, Ernest Nelson, for the purpose of dissection. Mr. Nelson then sold the body parts removed from the cadavers, by his own admission, to “‘giant’ medical research companies.”23 In response to the arrests, the UCLA medical school temporarily suspended acceptance of any new bodies to its cadaver program and began a full investigation into how this trafficking in human body parts could have ever occurred. This very publicly announced investigation began even as Ernest Nelson repeatedly explained to reporters that “medical school officials gave him access to the university’s body freezer twice a week, where he was allowed to saw off knees, hands, torsos, heads, and other body parts.”24 Goodwin gives the following details about the case as well as raising some broader necroeconomy issues: “Among Nelson’s clients was the Fortune 500 pharmaceutical giant, Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary, Mitek, obtained tissue from Nelson in the 1990s ... UCLA is simply the canary in the coalmine. Other medical schools, university hospitals, and organ procurement organizations are known to engage in such clandestine transactions.”25 Johnson & Johnson quickly responded to the UCLA case. A spokesperson explained that while its subsidiary Mitek did in fact purchase postmortem biomaterials from Nelson, “Mitek did not knowingly receive samples that may have been obtained in an inappropriate way.”26 The spokesperson’s response led to two persistent and unanswered follow-up questions: Where exactly did the company believe the postmortem body parts originated? And, did anyone ever ask?

After further investigation by authorities, both men were criminally charged in March 2007 with conspiracy and grand theft, and Mr. Nelson was charged with tax evasion on the over one million dollars that he made by selling human body parts to “more than 20 private medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies.”27 Reid pleaded guilty in October 2008 “to one count of conspiracy to commit grand theft, with a special accusation that he damaged or destroyed more than $1 million worth of school property, which refers to the donated bodies.”28 Finally, in May 2009, Ernest Nelson was found guilty of conspiring to commit grand theft, embezzlement, and tax evasion and in June 2009 sentenced to ten years in prison. He was also ordered to pay fines, penalties, restitution, and back taxes, which totaled more than $1.7 million.

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