Kin Get a Say in Cadaver Case

A Los Angeles court commissioner ordered attorneys for UCLA and the families of body donors on Tuesday to work out the details of a preliminary injunction to govern the university’s scandal-ridden willed-body program.

Last month, the same commissioner, Bruce E. Mitchell, signed a temporary restraining order barring UCLA from moving donated cadavers without the court’s permission. He said he planned to extend that order into a longer-lasting preliminary injunction next week.

At the same time, medical school officials announced that they would indefinitely suspend, and perhaps close, the body-donor program.

Henry G. Reid, director of UCLA’s willed-body program, and Ernest V. Nelson, a middleman suspected of reselling the cadavers to major research corporations, were arrested last month by UCLA police, Reid on suspicion of grand theft, and Nelson on suspicion of receiving stolen property.

Nelson told The Times last month that he had cut up about 800 bodies over six years with the full knowledge and permission of the university. He said he did nothing wrong.

It is illegal to sell human body parts for profit. Nelson said he was paid for his labor, storage and handling of the body parts.

Since then, the university quit accepting new cadavers into its program, and asked former Gov. George Deukmejian to investigate and recommend new safeguards for such programs throughout the University of California system.

“The program remains suspended,” attorney Louis M. Marlin said Tuesday after the court hearing. “It will not be reopened until the investigation by former Gov. Deukmejian is completed and until we have ... shown the court that the program is of the highest quality and highest level of protection that is possible.”

But attorney Raymond P. Boucher, who represents a proposed class of donor families, said he doubted that would ever be possible.

“I don’t believe, in light of the huge incentive -- the illegal market that exists out there -- that this program or any public program can provide sufficient safeguards to the public” against the illegal sales of human body parts, he said.

Marlin raised eyebrows in court Tuesday when he told Mitchell that the university might want to use two dozen stored cadavers in next year’s gross anatomy course. In an interview after the hearing, Marlin said he was speaking for himself, and not on behalf of the university, when he advised the court that “at some point in time” he might seek its permission for medical students to use the donated bodies next year.

“It is a gift that we do not want to see not being used,” he told the court.

Marlin also is defending the university in ongoing civil litigation. “The family members here are clearly the emotional victims of Mr. Reid and Mr. Nelson’s commercialization of this gift,” he said. “But beyond that, as to who is the legal victim of this commercialization is a matter still greatly in doubt.”

He insisted that the donations were used for scientific research, which was consistent with the donors’ wishes.

Despite the “despicable” commercialization by Reid and Nelson, he said, “that does not mean that the donations themselves were misused.”