Cadaver Dissected in Secret at UC Irvine : Scandal: Firm’s private classes were held in Willed Body Program’s lab in apparent violation of university policy.

At least one cadaver was dissected in private, clandestine anatomy courses in the UC Irvine laboratory that is now at the center of an unfolding scandal over bodies donated for science, campus officials said Wednesday.

Up to 30 premedical students eager for a competitive edge paid about $300 each for the course, offered twice since 1998 by a tutoring company in the basement laboratory of UC Irvine’s Willed Body Program. The program’s director, who has since been fired, once had business ties to the man who offered the anatomy courses.

University officials said they did not authorize the class, did not allow use of the donated cadaver and can find no record that the school received any course proceeds.

Unauthorized use of donated bodies is a violation of university policy, and use of university property for private profit is a violation of state law, officials said.

The anatomy classes, offered by a company called Replica Notes, are a focus in the widening probe into allegations of wrongdoing at the medical school’s Willed Body Program. University officials say that program director Christopher S. Brown, 27, who ran the program for three years until he was fired effective Friday, may have profited from bodies donated to UC Irvine.

William Parker, an associate executive vice chancellor at UC Irvine, said the unauthorized classes took place in Brown’s laboratory. The anatomy students “paid their money to Replica,” Parker said.

Investigators are examining whether Brown had financial ties to several firms that did business with the program and whether he steered contracts their way. University officials say he contracted with a medical transport company that he briefly co-owned with Replica Notes founder Jeffrey Frazier.

Officials are scrutinizing Brown’s sale of six cadaver spines to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. Hospital officials say that Brown asked the hospital for a $5,000 check made out to a company unconnected to the university.

Jumbled records at the Willed Body Program make it impossible to tell if cremated remains of cadavers were disposed of properly or returned to families that requested ashes when research was complete, university officials have said.

The district attorney’s office is

probing the allegations, discovered by the university after an audit.

Replica Notes founder Frazier has not responded to requests for comment. Brown repeatedly has denied any wrongdoing and said he pulled out of the transport service when he realized that it posed a conflict of interest. On Wednesday his attorney, Michael McDonnell, though still unfamiliar with the allegations, suggested that the university knew of the courses at the time.

But Parker said the university uncovered the courses in June, when Richard T. Robertson, chairman of the department of anatomy and neurobiology, found a Web site advertising classes in anatomy taught with a cadaver.

Officials say that a moonlighting graduate student led one of the courses, letting students observe but not participate in the dissection. The graduate student declined to discuss the course.

UC Irvine does not offer dissection labs to premedical students, officials said. Several years ago the campus discontinued an anatomy course in which students watched a dissection.

Robertson said the discovery could have come sooner, as more than a year ago he saw a brochure for the Replica class that touted a UC Irvine connection. He dropped the matter after leaving a telephone message with Replica warning that the course was not sanctioned.

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Times staff writer Jeff Gottlieb contributed to this story.