The exploitation of corpses in medicine has a macabre history

Recent revelations at the UNT Health Science Center show that profit can turn noble medical endeavors macabre. An NBC News investigation uncovered a practice: the bodies of marginalized people, predominantly Black, men, the mentally ill and the homeless, were being used for medical training and research without their consent or their families’ permission. This exploitation reflects a shameful history that dates back to the beginnings of medical education in America.

The ultimate rite of passage for future doctors is macroscopic anatomy, in which we dissect human corpses. During my first year of medical school, we worked in teams of four and spent one evening studying anatomy from textbooks, the next morning lecturing, and the afternoon dissecting the corpse from head to toe. Over the course of a semester, we worked our way from the superficial layers of skin to deep into the internal organs. We peeled away layers of skin, identified muscles, bones and ligaments, removed the heart, liver and other organs, and even took a circular saw to the skull to remove the brain for examination.

The study of human anatomy is essential to the training of physicians. Nowadays, it is common for people to donate their bodies to medical science after their death, whether for dissection, tissue collection, or medical experiments. However, this was not always the case.

In 1989, less than a decade before I began medical school, nearly 10,000 bones were found buried beneath the Medical College of Georgia. About 75% of these bones came from black bodies. In the 19th century, in the early years of formalized medical education, medical students stole the bodies of recently deceased black people to use in dissection courses. It was expected, accepted and encouraged. Black and white people could not be buried together. To obtain the remains, all the students had to do was sneak into separate burial sites on the outskirts of the city in the middle of the night and escape with the bodies. And the remains rarely received a dignified return to the grave. Some were dumped on city streets, sewers or incinerators.

This practice never ended; it has merely evolved. Today, there is a for-profit and unregulated industry that supplies cadavers to medical schools, with corporate interests often taking precedence over ethical concerns.

In fact, the modern equivalent of the midnight grave robbers of the 19th century is the 21st century body broker, who often targets those with little medical competence or financial stability. Body brokers are officially referred to as non-transplant tissue banks and are distinct from the organ and tissue transplant industry, which is strictly regulated by the U.S. government.

They promise to cover the costs of a dignified burial in exchange for individuals or their families donating their bodies to science after death. Often the brokers offer neither one nor the other, but instead harvest tissues and organs in an industry in which corpses are “traded as raw material in a largely unregulated national market,” as a Reuters investigative report describes.

The pursuit of medical progress must not come at the expense of human dignity, especially for marginalized communities. The historic exploitation of Black people for medical reasons casts a long shadow, and we must ensure that such injustices are never repeated.

We must demand transparency and accountability from the body brokering industry, strengthen regulations to protect vulnerable populations, and prioritize ethical considerations in all aspects of medical research and training. Only then can we truly preserve the inherent value of every human life, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or circumstance.

Dr. Brian Williams is a trauma and acute care surgeon in Dallas and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine. This column is an adapted excerpt from Chapter 5 of his new book. The bodies keep coming: messages from a black trauma surgeon about racism, violence and how we healand is reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2023 Broadleaf Books.

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