UCLA to Resume Cadaver Program

UCLA’s cadaver donation program, suspended last year after a scandal in which employees allegedly sold body parts for personal profit, will be allowed to reopen in the next few days under court supervision and new rules, lawyers on both sides of the case said Tuesday.

Under a preliminary ruling by the Los Angeles County Superior Court, UCLA will set up a revamped willed-body program, which is intended to provide cadavers for dissection by medical and dental students and researchers. The decision by Court Commissioner Bruce E. Mitchell stems from litigation on behalf of registered donors that accuses UCLA of improperly disposing of donated bodies.

As a practical matter, however, the program is not expected to begin accepting donations until early next year, when construction of a new facility for the program is completed.

The new rules, recently approved by the University of California system, apply at all five UC campuses that have willed-body programs, said Dr. Allen Nissenson, an associate dean of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, who helps oversee UCLA’s willed-body program on the dean’s behalf.

The new measures include implanting glass transmitters -- as tiny as a rice grain -- in body parts. The chips can send out radio signals, allowing the parts to be tracked by computer from the time bodies are donated to when they are disposed of, Nissenson said.

Body parts will be able to be tracked not only from each campus, but also from the University of California’s headquarters, he said.

In addition, administration of the programs will be more centralized. All five UC willed-body programs -- at campuses in Davis, Irvine, San Diego and San Francisco, as well as Los Angeles -- will now report to a UC-systemwide director, along with the deans of their respective medical schools, Nissenson said.

Previously, programs typically were overseen by an academic department at the medical school.

The new rules were enacted after the director of UCLA’s program was arrested in 2004 on suspicion of grand theft for allegedly selling body parts through a middleman to major research firms.

The former director, Henry G. Reid, was removed from his job but has denied wrongdoing through an attorney and has not been charged. UCLA police have not turned the case over to prosecutors and say that the investigation is ongoing.

In 1996, UCLA had been sued by relatives of donors and prospective donors for alleged improper disposal of body parts, including commingling parts from various donors and dumping them in landfills. That litigation is ongoing.

At least one other campus was implicated in a scandal. An audit at UC Irvine’s program in 1999 showed that its director sold spines to a Phoenix hospital for $5,000 each.

Mike Arias, a lawyer representing prospective donors and relatives of donors, said the expansive levels of oversight in UC’s reforms were a step in the right direction.

“I am confident that there [are] now some defined procedures in place that can ... allow some people to place more confidence in the willed-body program,” Arias said.

“There’s a better chance that the family members’ interests are being protected when it comes to the donation of human remains.”

After UCLA voluntarily suspended its program last year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner imposed a restraining order keeping it from reopening.

UCLA’s new facility for the willed-body program will have video cameras allowing the campus Police Department and the program to track donated bodies from the time they arrive at the loading dock.

At each critical point in the transfer of bodies or body parts, security cameras and motion detectors will be installed.

Nissenson said he is eager for the program to resume, as the program’s suspension has caused shortages of bodies for researchers. Before the program’s suspension, UCLA was home to the nation’s oldest body donor program and received 175 to 200 body donations a year. Nissenson said he expects donations to be low initially but back to normal within 18 to 24 months, based on the experience UC Irvine had after its scandal.

Since the program was suspended, UCLA has had to rely on donations from other campuses for its medical and dental students to dissect.

Mitchell’s ruling is considered preliminary until prospective donors to the program are notified and given the opportunity to comment on it.

The court will supervise UCLA’s management of the body donor program for at least 18 months.

UCLA police spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein said the agency still intends to hand over the results of its criminal investigation to prosecutors.

Earlier this year, a judge called the pace of the investigation “glacial.”

“It’s an incredibly complicated investigation,” Greenstein said, and “it’s incredibly time-consuming.”