April 1, 2022 • 53 mins
Have you ever known someone who donated their body to science? On paper, it's an extraordinarily noble act. Yet in the US, this form of donation is chock-full of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. In this episode, the guys dive headlong into the tragic, often disgusting reality of what happens to people who consign their bodies to the greater good, only to be sold off piece by piece, monetized and exploited by an industry of folks collectively known as 'body brokers.' Trigger warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of desecration, and may not be appropriate for all listeners.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. At the top of the show,
there's a very important disclaimer that we need to put
here at the very very front. Uh, this is a ghoulish,
(00:47):
grizzly episode, and this is an episode that sadly is
going to have is going to be something that many
of our US based conspiracy realists have personally encountered, perhaps
with out knowing that they have encountered this, So it's important.
But be warned if visceral descriptions or not your thing,
(01:07):
this might not be the one for you, as as
in descriptions of viscera, right not not just like very
detailed descriptions, well both both We've talked we've talked about
organ donation in the past, and you know when done
with consent, informed consent, when done with high standards of safety.
Donating your organs is one of the most noble acts
(01:30):
you as an individual can do for literally anyone. You're
sacrificing part of yourself to give someone else, often a stranger,
a new lease on life, or to allow them to
live some kind of life at all. People can also,
upon their death donate their bodies to science. And the
hope here would be that this posthumous sacrifice, because it's
(01:51):
still a sacrifice, will further research at any number of fields,
ultimately in theory, making the world overall a better play. Unfortunately,
as we found to our great sorrow, this does not
always work out the way we would collectively hope. Here
are the facts. I mean, we have to talk about
(02:12):
donating your body to science. Have have you guys ever
thought about this or do you have any family member
who ever considered this? Oh? Yeah, we mentioned it not
long ago when we covered the heads that were stolen
from that truck back in the day. And I have
no personal connection to body donation at least in the
way we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah, it was
interesting to kind of go through the distinction right of
(02:35):
being an organ donner versus donating your body to science.
And we'll get into some of the minutia of those differences,
but we that was kind of my first exposure to
the fact that those two things are not the same. Yeah,
they're very much not the same. And this is actually
you know, as a guy who tried to donate one
of his eyes while alive and ran into complications. Uh,
(02:56):
donating your body to science, it's noble thing. But unfortunately,
even on my end, it's something that would be very
cautious about. Here's why. Here's first, let's tell you how
the process is supposed to work. Generally, it goes like this.
You make the decision while you are still alive. For
some people, this is simply a matter of their personal
(03:17):
philosophy or beliefs. For some people it's maybe they have
a terminal condition and they think science may be able
to help other people with my condition if I donate
my body to the cause. So you figure out where
you want your body to go. There are a lot
of places. There's not one single like donate your body
(03:40):
here outfit. Uh, most of them are going to be
university associated medical schools, some are private industries or organizations rather,
and then some are government agencies and UH it's kind
of an audition process which might surprise a lot of us.
You have to fill out a donor and sent form
(04:01):
well ahead of time, and it's very very it's so
very important to be on the same page with your
loved ones. You have to make sure that they know
about your decision. It needs to be written into your will.
You should have a will and UH. It's also possible
for your family to just decide to donate your body
(04:21):
when you die, whether or not you've talked about it,
for a number of reasons, some are which are quite tragic.
So if you don't want that, make sure to stay
on good terms with them, like, you know, leave on
a good note if you can. Why like they would
like donate your body to science out of spite. No,
as we learn from a Reuter's investigation, it's often because
(04:42):
people don't have enough money even to afford a basic cremation.
And we're gonna get into it, but they're one of
the most likely reasons that a body would be donated
is because there's not money available for a funeral service
and or you know, burial or cremation in the us. Sure, yeah, you'll.
So let's say you've decided this, your family is on
(05:04):
the same page, and they want to help you, in
theory be part of the greater good. So there will
be an organization um or hopefully a nonprofit, that will
screen potential donors while they're still alive. This is a
thorough medical exam and it includes you know a little
(05:25):
bit of your past medical history, questions about illnesses, surgeries,
you may have had, any IVY drug use, communicable diseases.
Let's say you set that up and you pass that
test and they say, okay, you will qualify for this.
You go on. You live your life to the fullest
possible extent until you expire. But when you die, there's
(05:47):
a second test that chosen institution is going to now
for the second time determine if they'll accept your body.
That's right, Not everyone gets accepted because these institutions, when
they agree in that screening while you're alive, they're still
not legally required to take the cadaver if it doesn't
(06:08):
meet those standards. And those standards aren't things like age
or ethnicity or genetic information. They're mainly things that could
could be a health risk to people who will be
working with that human tissue later. You know, um, like,
you're probably not going to get accepted for a science
(06:29):
tissue donation if you have HIV, some kinds of hepatitis, syphilis,
kidney failures, bad viral infections that result in isolation, that
kind of stuff. And if you were very very overweight
or in some cases very very underweight, then you may
also not fit the bill. Um. And that's where we
(06:51):
run into one of the first problems. Because let's say
we've all agreed, right, um, we're the average American family,
which means that a funeral expense is going to be
a terribly hard bill to pay at one of the
most vulnerable times of our lives. But what if the
body of our loved wind gets declined. We have to
make sure we have back pocket arrangements otherwise we're going
(07:16):
to find ourselves stranded with a dead body on our
hands and no real plan for what to do with
it next. So that's that's the first pitfall. But let's
let's stay positive for a second. Let's say your body
is accepted. Okay, So if your body is accepted by
the institution of your choice, that group then covers the
costs because this is a value to them clearly, and
(07:38):
that includes transportation, filing of the death certificate, the cremation
after use um, and the return of the cremains. UM.
Some groups, in fact go a step further and require
that you arrange delivery of the body to them, especially
if it's another state. UH. And there is in fact
an entire industry built around the transportation of so when
(08:00):
next UM, once your body is in UH the particular
institutions facilities, they use your remains to further whatever research
or mission they're focused on. And that's going to be
a big driving factor for the most part UH in
the individual's choice to donate their body to set institution.
Like you said, then maybe they have a particular condition
(08:21):
they think UM using their body for research could help.
Maybe it's someone who is an alumni of SET institution,
or it's somebody who you know as a professor there,
or they just believe in the cause of that particular institution. Yeah,
but this is this gives you a little bit of
UM visibility on what will happen to the body. But
(08:42):
here's another sticky wicket. Most places will not let you
donate your body for a specific purpose. As a matter
of fact, the vast majority will not allow you to do. So.
You can go maybe to UM to a medical outfit
that is doing Alzheimer's research, for example, and you can say,
I'll donate this body to this organization because my loved
(09:04):
win had Alzheimer's, and then you you have a pretty
good guess that they're going to use this body in
Alzheimer's research. But these places will never guarantee that they
want to be able to use that body as needed,
and that body needs to come with all of its organs,
Meaning these two activities are mutually exclusive. You cannot donate
(09:25):
your body to science and participate in an organ donor program.
Other groups like Science Care, which we'll talk about a
bit further in today's episode, do allow both organ donation
and whole body donation. Important note the companies do not
pay the families involved here that closely, they do not
(09:46):
pay the families involved because that would be illegal, not
to mention, in my opinion, a bit ghoulish and probably
cause a lot of problems, especially in places with skyrocketing inequality. Absolutely,
and it seems to go hand in hand with the
idea of you may donate your body to an institution
where their primary focus of research is something that you
(10:08):
personally believe in. But it would be logistically a nightmare
to say, Okay, we guarantee this donation will be used
for this, because it just doesn't really make sense if
they need it for something else, and then all of
a sudden you have angry family members on your hands
that just yeah, and just to be clear, we're talking
about these are institutions that do this, that are accredited,
(10:29):
that are up like the good we were talking about
the good guys, the positive way for this to happen. Yeah,
the John Hopkins, you know, like the Yale School of Medicine,
stuff like that, or maybe even some pharmaceutical companies who
are working on R and D or funding research. And
at times there's a lot of overlap. At this point,
(10:50):
you're wondering, Okay, guys, I get it. How often does
this actually happen? Well, well, here's the problem. And I
want to shout out some great work at Reuters, some
great work at some other other things that I was
researching this. We have put a lot of time into
looking into this. And I don't know about you, Matt,
(11:11):
I don't know about you know, but I was unable
to find a real accurate statistic on how frequently this
occurs in the even even when I qualified it, I
was able to find one thanks to Reuters, which will
get to in a second. But humanity is collectively not
sure how often this happens every year, much less how
(11:32):
often has happened in total. No really accurate statistics exist
because there is no central regulatory body tracking these what
are called anatomical gifts. That's another euphemism you're run into. UH.
You'll find some experts estimating that medical schools collectively get
about ten thousand to fifteen thousand bodies donated per year,
(11:56):
but that doesn't count all the additional bodies going to
private end at ease, to corporations, and again to government agencies. UH.
There was was a number back in two thousand and
nine from UH, an article written by a professor at
Harvard Business School who said the number of bodies donated
in the US to all groups totaled about twenty thousand.
(12:18):
That sounds like a lot. It's still not enough. Multiple
institutions continually report an ongoing need for more corpses, and
this has led to serious problems. As we speak today,
they're ongoing and their crucial concerns when it comes to
this grizzly yet perhaps paradoxically important practice, we found that
(12:40):
there is definitely some stuff they don't want you to know.
What are we talking about. I'll tell you after a
word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Let's
talk about body brokers. How does how does this grieve
family actually get past this tragedy? What makes them sometimes
(13:06):
donate to science and after they do that donation, however
they see it happening. How does it get to those institutions.
Several times on this show and a couple other ones,
we've talked about resurrection men back in the day who
would acquire bodies because there was a bit of an
issue there where it was legal to experiment on a
(13:26):
dead body, but it was illegal to you know, go
to a graveyard and dig up a dead body, or
to acquire a dead body from the morgue or a
recently deceased human being. Um, we're entering a weird gray
area here where we have been for many, many years,
where there's there's really a price loophole. Honestly, that has
(13:48):
created an entire new market for dead bodies. And people
are resurrecting resurrection men just so, Yeah, because the resurrection
man idea came about due to a odd legal loophole
um several centuries ago. It was absolutely legal to experiment
on dead bodies medical researchers, doctors and so on, surgeons anatomists,
(14:13):
but it was generally illegal to procure them, kind of
like some of those drug laws that say possession of
marijuana is okay, but buying it is a big no no.
So this gray market, slash and legal market of resurrection
men arose, and they were body snatchers. You can argue,
just like we did, Matt, that resurrection men have been
(14:34):
resurrected body brokers who don't like the name body brokers,
by the way, Uh, they'll they'll prefer the term non
transplant tissue banks. They buy and sell human body parts
or entire corpses. And wait, you might be saying, by sell,
how can they get away with that? Didn't you just
say this was illegal? Well, here's the thing. In the
(14:56):
US and several other countries, the organ tram plant trade
is heavily regulated. In theory shout out to our other
episode on the Red Market. But you may be surprised
to learn Uncle Sam does not has never regulated the
use of human body parts in research, training and so on.
(15:17):
So it's kind of like if you think of a
human body like a car. It's kind of like you
you do have to have some paperwork and accountability when
you're selling certain pieces of the car. But if you
just sell the whole car, or you just sell these
pieces that don't qualify, you know, as organs, then do
what you want. You literally have to have no qualification.
(15:40):
I guess. I imagine they figured they've already ticked the
box for that regulation by overseeing the procurement stage, and
then as long as they go through the right channels
to get them to the research institutions, then go with God.
At that point, I'm sure you guys found it as well.
There's only one state I know of that keeps detailed
records on the industry, and that is the state of
(16:01):
New York. They looked at numbers that went from two
thousand and found that companies doing business in New York,
not necessarily based there, but doing business there shipped at
least one hundred thousand body parts across the entire country
over the course of three years, and that's a weird number,
(16:22):
especially when you reference it to the idea that um
only the Harvard or Harvard Professor palaces. Only twenty thousand
were shipped across the US all in all right, so
it seems like there's a lot of disturbing variants in
the estimates. But think about it right now, as McCobb
(16:44):
as it sounds. Whatever you do, whatever your qualifications are,
if you happen to have a box of heads or
a hand of glory and you didn't get it through
the commission of a crime, you can sell it. You
can like go online, just start a square space or something.
(17:05):
I don't think they want that association, but you could
just start a website and sell this stuff and it's
absolutely legal. Surely there's some way to to document chain
of custody. I mean, it's gonna take your word for
it that you didn't get this hand from the commission
of a crime. This is a good question. So the
issue on the table then is that the onus of
(17:28):
responsibility often falls upon the medical institutions accepting the accepting
the remains, so they have their own internal standards which
can vary from one place to the next, such that
they can say, look, this doesn't seem right to us, Well,
we can't, we can't accept this in good faith. It
(17:51):
reminds me of the argument you often hear about, like
campaign donations, where it's like, well, you don't care where
it came from. That's not our job. But but like
it is their job in some respect, and it definitely
is the job of the medical institutions. But it could
also be an argument they make where everything's even on
the up and up, just turns out it was actually
uh from something completely a legitimate Yeah, it's it's passing
(18:15):
the buck of accountability. Right. There's a lot of not
my job is in some of these things, especially when
you get to the non transplant tissue banks or body brokers.
The Reuter's thing that Matt and I referring to is
an excellent deep dive series, uh multipart, and we're gonna
(18:35):
pull from that several times today. One of the first
things I'd like to pull from there is a quote
from Angela MacArthur. So this series, this quote was from Seen,
but the series goes back a few years. Uh. Angela
MacArthur at the time was the director of the body
donation program at University of Minnesota Medical School. She was
(18:57):
also once upon a time the chairperson of the state's
Anatomical Donation Commission, so, in other words, a world class expert.
And what she had to say was not pretty and
it is not nuanced. It is a clear statement of
a problem. She says, quote, the current state of affairs
is a free for all. We're seeing similar problems to
(19:18):
what we saw with grave robbers centuries ago. Uh and
then she continued, I don't know if I can state
this strongly enough. What they, meaning body brokers are doing
is profiting from the sale of humans. Wow. Strong there's
a lot of money to be made. And you know
there's there's some frankly offensive stuff too about this. When
(19:40):
you look at the price per body, you know, because
that's what they're doing. They're putting a price on on
human remains. And Ben you've mentioned like the body's exhibit
oftentimes as the providence of those cadavers being sketchy at best. Yeah,
and that's um the body it's exhibit. Unfortunately, those corpses
(20:04):
were often likely taken from prisoners who did not have
informed consent and their family didn't either. But yet, Matt,
if you want to go into the price of a
body on a body broker market. Let's let's get into it. Yeah,
let's let's quickly do that. According to the seventeen investigation
(20:25):
by Reuter's titled The Body Trade you can find at
reuters dot com, they found that a body broker or
a human tissue trader could sell a single human body
for somewhere between three thousand and five thousand dollars. So
that's like a whole human body. You could also cut
(20:46):
that body up and get part price per part, which
is where you do you get more in totality if
you're selling individual parts than you would as a whole body,
you can it's chop shop rules. I would think you would. Yeah,
I found uh because I was digging in because it
was hard to find the numbers here. So I also
looked at the Rutterer stuff and then went to UM
(21:08):
a source in f D A from one and their
estimate was a little bit higher, and I think I
know why. So they said, in general, you're looking at
around five thousand dollars for a whole body. They said
prices sometimes top ten thousand dollars because body parts like
may fit certain specifications, like we want to look at
(21:30):
this medical condition, and to make it even more ghoulish,
that's if you sell those parts. Body brokers don't always
sell the parts. Sometimes they rent it, sometimes they lease
it and they get it back. Yeah, how is that
even possible? Well, in that Rutter's article, there's an example
in of a shipment to a quote Florida Orthopedic Training
(21:54):
seminar and Orthopedic Training seminar than included twenty seven shoulders. Now,
I can imagine if that training seminar needs just the
specific shoulder for you know, however many hours that's going
to be theoretically as grizzly as it is. You could
then ice put that shoulder back on Ice or those
(22:14):
twenty seven shoulders, and then ship it back to the company.
I imagine it's to demonstrate a medical device of some
kind that could happen to or to train to train
e m T s for instance, the resuscitation UH. Surgeons
also surgeons, I think I put this somewhere else in here,
but surgeons also have um routinely said that three D
(22:36):
modeling or mannekins or simulations is not like the real thing,
and that to do their jobs well, they need to
practice on actual bodies in a way that does not
risk injuring people while they're you know, earning their surgeon stripes.
This is um, this is weird because there is clearly
(22:58):
a need. But oh I, I also need to point
out that source I mentioned earlier is in f d
A is the National Funeral Directors Association, and they're they're
making a lot of moves actually in favor of reining
in the body broker trade. So kudos to them. But
so the issue here is that there is a ton
(23:20):
of money to be made. We talked about it, right,
especially considering that sometimes body brokers or these banks can
function as libraries, lending out components of what was once
a human being. They can make a lot of money,
but there making it without the informed consent of a
(23:40):
deceased person's family, often in very misleading ways. And of
course the deceased person's family is not receiving any compensation
for this. That would be illegal. But this somehow is.
And one thing that's important to recognize about the way
this industry works is it revolves around the ability to
access a large supply of bodies that are essentially free,
(24:05):
that have nowhere, nowhere to go, nowhere to rest, and
what what happens is, uh, these are you know you've
heard the term healthcare, folks think of the term deathcare.
That mean that is an umbrella term encompassing every aspect
of what happens when you have to try to try
(24:27):
to figure out how to move on with your life,
try to figure out how to help someone you love
that has past be put to rest in the manner
of their choosing and respectfully. But and we'll see this
through some specific examples. Um, this hits this hits low
income families really hard. You're desperate. Maybe you've had maybe
(24:51):
you've had a relative or a parent, or a child
or sibling who has struggled with chronic medical condition of
one sort or another all their life. You've paid for
multiple surgeries, right, You've paid from multiple treatments. And this
is the US. So it is where the like that
one of the top causes of bankruptcy as a medical disaster. Right,
(25:12):
So you have drained whatever resources you could access, and
unfortunately your loved one has passed away. You cannot afford
the often unexpectedly high cost of a funeral, more of
of a cremation. And then someone comes along and they
(25:32):
say you know you can donate your loved one's body
to science, will take care of the expenses, and we
will connect them with someone who will help make the
world a better place for the generations to come after.
And then when they're done, when this operation is done,
we will cremate the remains for you. We will give
(25:53):
them to you free of charge. And isn't that something
your loved one would have wanted to do to help
other people? Are you saying they are like reps for
these organizations that seek these situations out? Oh yes, yeah,
And often it will be in the form of just
a little slip of paper or brochure that ends up
(26:15):
at an actual funeral home. Not always, but sometimes at
a funeral home as uh an option see right burial
cremation or c right. And this this all means that often,
due to the way health and death are priced in
the United States. Strange to say it that way, but
(26:36):
it's not hyperbolic. This means that often families feel they
have no choice other than accepting the help of a
body broker. And that's where it leads us to controversy. Corruption, conspiracy, crime,
Obviously inequality huge part of this, no argument against it,
(26:57):
but Before we continue, I do think it's important to
note that not all of these body brokers, these non
transplant tissue banks, are inherently sinister. This is a thing
that needs to happen. Donated bodies are an essential role
in training, education, research. This is why a lot of
people aren't dead today. To be honest with you, Well,
(27:17):
I feel like we lead with that for sure. I mean,
the idea of this profession or this the need for
these go betweens is not inherently malevolent. Somebody has to
act as the you know, lays on between the families
of the departed and where those bodies end up. And
usually they're just satisfying the wishes of that person. Yeah. Well,
(27:39):
and and think about the good bends talking about we
mentioned at the top a little bit the cadaver's body parts.
They're used by medical students all the time. Medical students
they need human bodies and sometimes just body parts to
actually study the techniques that they're learning in medical school
so that you can apply them later. Um, there's I mean,
(28:03):
there's so many different uses for for a cadaver in
the medical field that if you did not have them,
we would be out of look as humans like we
mentioned surgeons, mentioned paramedics. You shall also talk about how
people come up with the idea of new surgical instruments.
(28:24):
You you certainly wouldn't want to be having open heart
surgery and then be the person who died on the
table that helped the surgeon figure out, oh, there's a
better widget for this. You would like for that widget
to already be there. What it's time for you to
go under the knife. So this does make sense. It
teaches us about implants, techniques that could be evolved, new medicines,
(28:48):
and treatment for disease like serious stuff. So the needs there,
and we know this practice does produce measurable, significant, very
positive results for living people. The problem is there is
so much stuff about this trade that we do not know,
including people who are experts in studying it, like Ray
(29:12):
Madeoff as a Boston College law school professor who studies
the way that the legal system treats the remains of
dead people. Yeah, and I mean, and if this guy
is open in the way that we're about to point
out about what he doesn't know, I mean, I think
that says a lot. He says, quote, we know very
little about who is acquiring these bodies and what they
(29:32):
are doing with them. And then back to the Reuter's
piece that we've been talking about, a journalist by the
name of Brian grow He actually tried a little experiment
where they contacted a broker in Tennessee and after just
a few emails, they who were able to buy a
cervical spine and to human heads. He uh yeah, yeah.
(29:53):
And one of those surgical instruments that or or i
let's say a class of surgical instruments that was developed
through the use of bodies and testing on bodies was
something like the saws that are used in surgeries, surgical saws,
various types of bone saws, and things like that, specifically
saws that were designed to cut a human body open
(30:17):
and cut it up perhaps into parts, or amputate a
limb or something like that. As part of that Ruyter's investigation,
they found that those same, uh, those same tools that
were developed for working on bodies are often too expensive
for the companies that are being started by body brokers.
The body broker smaller companies, so they found that they
(30:40):
had actually been using chainsaws to cut up human bodies
after they were donated to their companies at least one
grizzly case. Yeah, and that guy was also renting body
parts out. Yes. I also want to add, so another
little piece of further digging I did is you always
want to try to go to the source of either
(31:02):
side of an argument. So if you want to see
people who are championing these tissue banks, you want to
visit the American Association of Tissue Banks. And they have
they have they break down the needs that we're describing,
but they, I would argue, kind of gloss over some
(31:23):
of the problems. Let's let's go back to this, the
idea that just if you'r you maybe just a few
emails away from finding someone who says, yes, I can
get you a spine, I can get you ahead. How
many heads do you want? You know what I mean?
And then you started talking price breaks or whatever. But Grow,
(31:48):
being a journalist, was horrified and I think heartbroken to
learn the origin of one of these bodies. The the
outfit that sold it to Restore Life USA. UH didn't
know that they were selling this to a reporter. He
found out the spine came from a young man named
Cody Saunders who had the struggle that I described earlier.
(32:11):
He died on his twenty four birthday after a long
battle with congenital conditions like a hole in his heart,
longstanding kidney issues. This poor guy had gone through sixty
six surgeries, more than seventeen hundred rounds of dialysis. And again,
the US is a lot of things, but it is
(32:34):
not good at healthcare right Like poverty is a big
cause of death, especially if you look at prevented a
medicine in this country. Anyway, even if you're a relatively
well off family, this kind of medical expense can put
you in a really tough spot. In the Saunders family
didn't have the money for burial cremation when Cody passed
(32:56):
away of a heart attacks, so they thought the course
for them to help people, and they thought, you know,
this is what our son would want to was to
donate his body to this outfit, Restore Life USA, which
is a for profit organization. The month after he died,
Restore Life sold cody spine to Reuters for three dollars
(33:20):
plus shipping. That's all it took. And I always assumed,
I guess that that it would be much more expensive later. Uh,
these same reporters would go on to buy those two
heads from the same place, and they consulted experts and
they said, okay, look here's what we got. You know
what I mean, here's what they went to people who
would be in charge of ethically sourcing human body parts
(33:45):
for medical institution and two A one everyone they that
they asked, each individual said this paperwork is crazy, sloppy,
there's not a good chain of custody. Everything's wrong with this.
I don't know if I, in my position at this school,
or at this university, or at this UH institution, I
(34:07):
don't know if I could ethically accept this. And that
is only one example of what we found is is
a very widespread process. I suggest we pause for a
moment for word from our sponsors and then dive deeper
into the dilemmas because there are even more. Unfortunately, this
is We're going to try to do some lighthearted episodes later, folks,
(34:36):
and we have returned again. As we said, there are
mission critical problems with the system as it stands today.
Even a lot of tissue banks will say the same thing.
They may be for the record talking about their competitors,
but everybody knows there's a problem. These families are not paid,
but these for profit bank brokers are definitely making a
(34:57):
ghoulish amount of cash. One of those sources I referenced earlier,
the American Association of Tissue Banks to trade organization representing
these folks UH says the following. When they say, how
does in a d O that's the acronym they prefer,
a non transplant anatomical donation organization? How do they collect funding?
(35:19):
Their quote is in order to sustain a mission of
helping donors and their loved ones fulfill their wishes to
aid researchers, educators, and clinicians in advancing science of medicine,
most often at no cost to the donor or his
or her loved ones. In a d O, s must
fund their operations by charging a fee for service to
(35:40):
those who are requesting and being provided non transplant gifts.
So they're basically saying what we said. They're just trying
to make it sound a bit more diplomatic, right, Am
I reading that correctly? Yeah? We canna, that's right. I
kind of wonder what their balance sheets look like, because
obviously they're providing value to some of these lower income
(36:01):
families in exchange for their loved ones by you know,
offering the cremation and the funeral process and all of
that stuff to pay for, Like, is that considered the
cost of doing business? Is that like recouped? Like I
just be really fascinated to see what their ledgers look like.
That's if they're actually using a you know, a standard crematorium, right,
(36:22):
an actual thing that's meant to cremate human bodies. Because
that's not always the case, because those are expensive as hell,
and there are other sales burned bodies with a blowtorch.
What are we talking about here? Back to that Reuter's article,
they mentioned a couple of instances where bodies were being
(36:44):
cremated if you call that cremated within medical waste incinerators,
which is just it's a different it's a different system,
and I don't know it. I couldn't tell you the difference,
but but it does probably mean that the cremains are
not You're right, you're getting some stuff your loved ones
in part, but probably some other mixings. And there you're
(37:07):
you're often only getting Yeah, this is why I want
to say, you're often you're often getting adulterated remains. You
could compare it to a mass grave at times, uh,
which I was on the fence about mentioning on air,
but it's true. Uh, you're also getting only a portion
of the person's body being cremated and the rest being
(37:29):
shipped off. This is this is a ghoulish way to
make money for a lot of um bad faith actors.
They also take a lot of agency away from the
family of a donor. You know, it is not infrequent
for body brokers to obtain a corpse through fraudulent means,
misleading the loved ones and the survivors. There's another story
(37:52):
I saw multiple places. Uh, Doris Stauffer when she passed away.
Her family, in particular, her son donated her body to
science because Doris they thought would be able to help
with further research into Alzheimer's. And there's a lot of exciting,
promising research going into Alzheimer's right now. So this makes
(38:15):
sense and it's been going on for years. So her son,
Jim Stoffer, contacts an outfit called Biological Resource Center. What
do we always say about organizations with cartoonishly vague, innocuous names,
Just watch out, just watch out for him. Uh. Yeah,
this was a company locally based in Arizona. The story
(38:36):
takes place in Sunrise, Arizona. Uh, and they brokeer the
donation of human bodies for research. When he contacted them,
they were on the ground in an hour, dispatching a
driver to collect the body. So he signs a form
keep in minds in the depths of grief his mother
has passed away. Uh, and he authorizes medical research on
(38:57):
her body. And then importantly he x a specific box
on this form. It's a boilerplate for that prohibits military
traffic safety and other quote non medical experiments. Ten days
later he and his family receiver cremated remains, and then
later they learned what actually happened. Yeah, So workers at
(39:19):
b R c UM detached one of Doris Stuffer's hands
for cremation, as you mentioned, only getting partial remains back UM.
After sending those ashes back to our son, the company
sold and shipped the rest of her body to a
taxpayer funded research project for the U. S. Army. So
(39:41):
that box that Jim Stouffer ticked clearly either they didn't
care or it was not legally binding. It was just
kind of like you know, for optics. Her brain was
never used for Alzheimer's research. Instead, Stuffer's body became part
of an army experiment to measure damage caused by roadside bombs.
(40:04):
She was one of at least twenty other cadavers that
were used in this same way. I don't know that
we're we we necessarily know the source of the other bodies.
Was this all through the same organization unknown? Not necessarily
It's possible, but it also wouldn't be uncommon for there
to be multiple contractors or sourcers here. Uh, sourcers, I
(40:28):
mean not sourcerers. Just really quickly, guys, I didn't realize
that human remains would be used for what was it,
quote traffic safety? Uh, like testing crash test dummies. I've
got a car stuff episode on that. Corpses were used
for a while to test you know, all those old
(40:48):
car commercials where you see the car hitting the wall.
They used to until they built crash test dummies, they
used to just use corpses. Also, I want to take
out a moment to shout out Projects Sunshine. We did
an episode that if you would like to learn more
about the unethical ways in which your government uses human bodies. Uh,
and not just it's not restricted to the US. Uh.
(41:09):
And it's not something that happens as a historical footnote.
But yeah, they're used with children too. Yes, that was
usually using the body parts of children to test radiation.
Do we know around what year the testing was done
there on Doris, but it sounds like it was, you know,
research for maybe around the Afghanistan or Iraq wars um
(41:33):
just some imagining roadside bombs where they were very interested
in that at the time. Let's see, so it was
twenty I want to say twenty fifteen or so. No,
I want to say maybe a little before twenty fifteen.
So maybe the good news is that still for the
(41:54):
still for family. Did later see justice because there was
a lawsuit against Biologic Resource Center and it's a biological
resource center and its owner one Stephen Gore talk about
nominative determinism. Gore guilty to UH running in a legal
operation because of the fraud he was committing UH and
(42:15):
he got he played guilty in twenty fifteen, but he
was sentenced to probation. Although I think it's hard to
argue this is a victimless crime. I think it would
be hard to swallow an argument, but I could imagine
the argument being made. Yeah, yeah, too true, I mean,
and it is very difficult to articulate how horrific this
(42:38):
can be for survivors of these situations brokers as we
established con turner profit of thousands of dollars for each
body donated, because their margin is so low, right, and
because we know a little bit about their profit margin.
I'm not saying the arguments about being servants of a
(43:01):
greater good are wrong. I'm not even saying they're insincere,
but it's a little tougher to believe them, you know
what I mean. I think you were right to be skeptical.
And eventually the good news is more and more people
began to listen to the experts who were saying, this
is basically the wild West in its terrible way. Something
has to be done. So politicians began to further understand
(43:24):
the extent of this problem, and they started to take
legal action. In the US, we're proud to report just
last year, uh Congress has brought more transparency and accountability
to this grizzly industry. Or they're trying to through the
introduction of something called the Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act,
which you could read in full available online. It's not
(43:47):
a law yet, but it very much should be. And
it seems to be gathering a lot of support, which
is positive. Yes, we think about where we were, guys,
there were there were private companies popping up all over
the country here in the US that were new body
brokers with just a name. You start a business. There
was no regulation really, and you what you needed were
(44:09):
a couple of freezers, maybe you know, an array of freezers,
let's say, depending on how many bodies you wanted to
handle at a time, and at least one cargo van
or shipping vehicle of some sort. And that's literally all
you need. The actual product that you're gonna be brokering
and selling gets donated to you. Right, it's free. Then
(44:33):
you get to make straight profit off that thing. Uh.
The and then shipping costs is literally your only other issue.
It's crazy how much money could be made for very
little investment upfront. And it, Thank goodness there's some kind
of regulation happening well on the way. Hopefully it does
(44:54):
end up actual regulation. But but fortunately for what I
would typify as the the larger majority of good guys
in this scenario, uh, hopefully for decent people. Uh, you'll
take a little bit of um, a little bit of
reassurance knowing that even the most uh Makavellian politician has
(45:20):
to understand the voting against the bill like this political suicide,
you know what I mean? Like how big is the grave?
Robbie Lobby is the kind of question they'll have back,
you know, in the back rooms of the campaign office. Well,
I think one thing we haven't really talked too much
about is just the fact that for not only is
(45:40):
there grief involved in people, you know, maybe of lower
means being taken advantage of when they're at their you know,
maybe lowest point, but also just the idea of religion
and what the way a body has handled means for
individuals religions, and how the reality of what's actually happening
(46:01):
once people find out or if they ever find out,
it could absolutely negate these deepest, most you know, sacredly
held beliefs and and could cause some serious trauma and
concern with individuals that are worried now maybe their loved
ones aren't transitioning into the afterlife properly because of the
way their corpse was handled. Well, you know, it's interesting
to say that because I had wanted to, I had
(46:24):
looked into that as well, and a little bit of
it was cutting for time. But one of one of
the most amazing things is the way that religions interact
with the modern day. And there's a pretty there's a
pretty impressive argument that a lot of religions have made
about what they see as being a good person. Because
(46:44):
you might be surprised to find that some religions that
have very specific requirements for how a body is treated
after after death or after physical death, I should say, uh,
they allow for organ donation, they allow for the contribution
of a greater good, and and the leaders of these
(47:05):
schools of spiritual thought have spent a great deal of
time thinking about this. And I commend that decision, you know,
to to say, like, hey, what is what is more
noble than than saying I know, I know my heart's
been through a lot, but I would love if it
(47:27):
was beating for you. You know, I think that's that's
pretty impressive. I think you have another career ahead of
you as a greeting card writer. Ben, Thank you. You know,
I almost did get a job one time writing for Hallmark,
but they wanted you to move uh to like Hallmark
head course, Yeah, I know, I know, right, But that
was be where everybody worked from home. At this point,
(47:49):
maybe it's important for us to say that the future
of the body broker industry, I don't know. It's tough
to predict where it's gonna go, because again, there's a
genuine need. People who are listening to the show today,
Some of our fellow conspiracy realists are alive because of
the research and the discoveries that came from this these practices.
(48:14):
Uh And honestly, unless something big changes in the United
States specifically, families often are gonna need some kind of
financial assistance to bury or cremate their loved ones with
or ter them with the respect that you know they deserve,
that every human being deserves. So how do we how
do we ensure those wishes are upheld? How can we
(48:36):
help both the living and the dead have full knowledge
of what they're agreeing to? I don't know. These aren't
rhetorical questions. I just I don't know that I don't
know if anyone knows the answer. Somehow make funerals less expensive?
Good God, I mean, but it all comes down to
a free market economy. Like if you're able to set
up a business that does a service that you are
(48:58):
paid for then you have a right to ours what
you want for it. You know, it's hard. It's a
hard thing to police. I guess that's what I'm getting at,
unless you may get part of a government entity and
just regulate the hell out of it. I'll give you
a quote from a dude named Steve Palmer, who, according
to the Reuter's investigation, is an Arizona mortician who serves
on that thing you're talking about, Ben, the National Funeral
(49:20):
Directors Association. It's he serves on their policy board. His
quote is, some funeral home directors are saying cremation isn't
paying the bills anymore. So let me see if I
can help people harvest some body parts. Okay, then yeah.
Check out our episode on the funeral industry as well,
and thanks to all the thanks to all the people
(49:43):
in the funeral industry who wrote to us about that
and gave us an insider peak. Uh. There is gonna
be one other phrase that you'll hear associated with body brokers.
It describes a different, also at times equally unethical profession.
It is the const apt of getting kickbacks for referring
(50:03):
clients to specific rehab facilities when they struggle with substance abuse.
Uh and that is a huge business we talked about
in the past. I'm trying to I'm trying to find
an ending for this episode that is something better than
people are terrible. Uh yeah, there we go. Hashtag not
(50:27):
all people are terrible. Funerals should be less expensive. I
endorsed this message and this has been endorsed by Matt
Frederick first of his name for It's been endorsed by
Matt Frederick for President. If you want to find out
more about our dark money political action campaign to get
our pal Matt elected to the highest office in the land,
(50:50):
or if you want to give us your thoughts on
the ethical dilemma of this trade, on the potential for
just heartbreaking corruption and conspiracy versus the potential for enormous
breakthroughs in medicine. Um. We we'd love to hear from you.
You can find us, like Noel said, at Matt Frederick
(51:12):
for President dot com or we adopt we are my
entire we are for profit presidential campaign. Uh so, and
our only donor is Illumination Global Unlimited. Don't don't worry
about that though. It's fine, yes, but if you if
(51:33):
you don't want to dive with us into the world
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(51:56):
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It'll get to you in October. Uh. That would be
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(52:16):
You can. You can call us any time you wish
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(52:37):
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You can write out the story in full. You can
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(52:59):
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(53:37):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. At the top of the show,
there's a very important disclaimer that we need to put
here at the very very front. Uh, this is a ghoulish,
(00:47):
grizzly episode, and this is an episode that sadly is
going to have is going to be something that many
of our US based conspiracy realists have personally encountered, perhaps
with out knowing that they have encountered this, So it's important.
But be warned if visceral descriptions or not your thing,
(01:07):
this might not be the one for you, as as
in descriptions of viscera, right not not just like very
detailed descriptions, well both both We've talked we've talked about
organ donation in the past, and you know when done
with consent, informed consent, when done with high standards of safety.
Donating your organs is one of the most noble acts
(01:30):
you as an individual can do for literally anyone. You're
sacrificing part of yourself to give someone else, often a stranger,
a new lease on life, or to allow them to
live some kind of life at all. People can also,
upon their death donate their bodies to science. And the
hope here would be that this posthumous sacrifice, because it's
(01:51):
still a sacrifice, will further research at any number of fields,
ultimately in theory, making the world overall a better play. Unfortunately,
as we found to our great sorrow, this does not
always work out the way we would collectively hope. Here
are the facts. I mean, we have to talk about
(02:12):
donating your body to science. Have have you guys ever
thought about this or do you have any family member
who ever considered this? Oh? Yeah, we mentioned it not
long ago when we covered the heads that were stolen
from that truck back in the day. And I have
no personal connection to body donation at least in the
way we're gonna be talking about today. Yeah, it was
interesting to kind of go through the distinction right of
(02:35):
being an organ donner versus donating your body to science.
And we'll get into some of the minutia of those differences,
but we that was kind of my first exposure to
the fact that those two things are not the same. Yeah,
they're very much not the same. And this is actually
you know, as a guy who tried to donate one
of his eyes while alive and ran into complications. Uh,
(02:56):
donating your body to science, it's noble thing. But unfortunately,
even on my end, it's something that would be very
cautious about. Here's why. Here's first, let's tell you how
the process is supposed to work. Generally, it goes like this.
You make the decision while you are still alive. For
some people, this is simply a matter of their personal
(03:17):
philosophy or beliefs. For some people it's maybe they have
a terminal condition and they think science may be able
to help other people with my condition if I donate
my body to the cause. So you figure out where
you want your body to go. There are a lot
of places. There's not one single like donate your body
(03:40):
here outfit. Uh, most of them are going to be
university associated medical schools, some are private industries or organizations rather,
and then some are government agencies and UH it's kind
of an audition process which might surprise a lot of us.
You have to fill out a donor and sent form
(04:01):
well ahead of time, and it's very very it's so
very important to be on the same page with your
loved ones. You have to make sure that they know
about your decision. It needs to be written into your will.
You should have a will and UH. It's also possible
for your family to just decide to donate your body
(04:21):
when you die, whether or not you've talked about it,
for a number of reasons, some are which are quite tragic.
So if you don't want that, make sure to stay
on good terms with them, like, you know, leave on
a good note if you can. Why like they would
like donate your body to science out of spite. No,
as we learn from a Reuter's investigation, it's often because
(04:42):
people don't have enough money even to afford a basic cremation.
And we're gonna get into it, but they're one of
the most likely reasons that a body would be donated
is because there's not money available for a funeral service
and or you know, burial or cremation in the us. Sure, yeah, you'll.
So let's say you've decided this, your family is on
(05:04):
the same page, and they want to help you, in
theory be part of the greater good. So there will
be an organization um or hopefully a nonprofit, that will
screen potential donors while they're still alive. This is a
thorough medical exam and it includes you know a little
(05:25):
bit of your past medical history, questions about illnesses, surgeries,
you may have had, any IVY drug use, communicable diseases.
Let's say you set that up and you pass that
test and they say, okay, you will qualify for this.
You go on. You live your life to the fullest
possible extent until you expire. But when you die, there's
(05:47):
a second test that chosen institution is going to now
for the second time determine if they'll accept your body.
That's right, Not everyone gets accepted because these institutions, when
they agree in that screening while you're alive, they're still
not legally required to take the cadaver if it doesn't
(06:08):
meet those standards. And those standards aren't things like age
or ethnicity or genetic information. They're mainly things that could
could be a health risk to people who will be
working with that human tissue later. You know, um, like,
you're probably not going to get accepted for a science
(06:29):
tissue donation if you have HIV, some kinds of hepatitis, syphilis,
kidney failures, bad viral infections that result in isolation, that
kind of stuff. And if you were very very overweight
or in some cases very very underweight, then you may
also not fit the bill. Um. And that's where we
(06:51):
run into one of the first problems. Because let's say
we've all agreed, right, um, we're the average American family,
which means that a funeral expense is going to be
a terribly hard bill to pay at one of the
most vulnerable times of our lives. But what if the
body of our loved wind gets declined. We have to
make sure we have back pocket arrangements otherwise we're going
(07:16):
to find ourselves stranded with a dead body on our
hands and no real plan for what to do with
it next. So that's that's the first pitfall. But let's
let's stay positive for a second. Let's say your body
is accepted. Okay, So if your body is accepted by
the institution of your choice, that group then covers the
costs because this is a value to them clearly, and
(07:38):
that includes transportation, filing of the death certificate, the cremation
after use um, and the return of the cremains. UM.
Some groups, in fact go a step further and require
that you arrange delivery of the body to them, especially
if it's another state. UH. And there is in fact
an entire industry built around the transportation of so when
(08:00):
next UM, once your body is in UH the particular
institutions facilities, they use your remains to further whatever research
or mission they're focused on. And that's going to be
a big driving factor for the most part UH in
the individual's choice to donate their body to set institution.
Like you said, then maybe they have a particular condition
(08:21):
they think UM using their body for research could help.
Maybe it's someone who is an alumni of SET institution,
or it's somebody who you know as a professor there,
or they just believe in the cause of that particular institution. Yeah,
but this is this gives you a little bit of
UM visibility on what will happen to the body. But
(08:42):
here's another sticky wicket. Most places will not let you
donate your body for a specific purpose. As a matter
of fact, the vast majority will not allow you to do. So.
You can go maybe to UM to a medical outfit
that is doing Alzheimer's research, for example, and you can say,
I'll donate this body to this organization because my loved
(09:04):
win had Alzheimer's, and then you you have a pretty
good guess that they're going to use this body in
Alzheimer's research. But these places will never guarantee that they
want to be able to use that body as needed,
and that body needs to come with all of its organs,
Meaning these two activities are mutually exclusive. You cannot donate
(09:25):
your body to science and participate in an organ donor program.
Other groups like Science Care, which we'll talk about a
bit further in today's episode, do allow both organ donation
and whole body donation. Important note the companies do not
pay the families involved here that closely, they do not
(09:46):
pay the families involved because that would be illegal, not
to mention, in my opinion, a bit ghoulish and probably
cause a lot of problems, especially in places with skyrocketing inequality. Absolutely,
and it seems to go hand in hand with the
idea of you may donate your body to an institution
where their primary focus of research is something that you
(10:08):
personally believe in. But it would be logistically a nightmare
to say, Okay, we guarantee this donation will be used
for this, because it just doesn't really make sense if
they need it for something else, and then all of
a sudden you have angry family members on your hands
that just yeah, and just to be clear, we're talking
about these are institutions that do this, that are accredited,
(10:29):
that are up like the good we were talking about
the good guys, the positive way for this to happen. Yeah,
the John Hopkins, you know, like the Yale School of Medicine,
stuff like that, or maybe even some pharmaceutical companies who
are working on R and D or funding research. And
at times there's a lot of overlap. At this point,
(10:50):
you're wondering, Okay, guys, I get it. How often does
this actually happen? Well, well, here's the problem. And I
want to shout out some great work at Reuters, some
great work at some other other things that I was
researching this. We have put a lot of time into
looking into this. And I don't know about you, Matt,
(11:11):
I don't know about you know, but I was unable
to find a real accurate statistic on how frequently this
occurs in the even even when I qualified it, I
was able to find one thanks to Reuters, which will
get to in a second. But humanity is collectively not
sure how often this happens every year, much less how
(11:32):
often has happened in total. No really accurate statistics exist
because there is no central regulatory body tracking these what
are called anatomical gifts. That's another euphemism you're run into. UH.
You'll find some experts estimating that medical schools collectively get
about ten thousand to fifteen thousand bodies donated per year,
(11:56):
but that doesn't count all the additional bodies going to
private end at ease, to corporations, and again to government agencies. UH.
There was was a number back in two thousand and
nine from UH, an article written by a professor at
Harvard Business School who said the number of bodies donated
in the US to all groups totaled about twenty thousand.
(12:18):
That sounds like a lot. It's still not enough. Multiple
institutions continually report an ongoing need for more corpses, and
this has led to serious problems. As we speak today,
they're ongoing and their crucial concerns when it comes to
this grizzly yet perhaps paradoxically important practice, we found that
(12:40):
there is definitely some stuff they don't want you to know.
What are we talking about. I'll tell you after a
word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. Let's
talk about body brokers. How does how does this grieve
family actually get past this tragedy? What makes them sometimes
(13:06):
donate to science and after they do that donation, however
they see it happening. How does it get to those institutions.
Several times on this show and a couple other ones,
we've talked about resurrection men back in the day who
would acquire bodies because there was a bit of an
issue there where it was legal to experiment on a
(13:26):
dead body, but it was illegal to you know, go
to a graveyard and dig up a dead body, or
to acquire a dead body from the morgue or a
recently deceased human being. Um, we're entering a weird gray
area here where we have been for many, many years,
where there's there's really a price loophole. Honestly, that has
(13:48):
created an entire new market for dead bodies. And people
are resurrecting resurrection men just so, Yeah, because the resurrection
man idea came about due to a odd legal loophole
um several centuries ago. It was absolutely legal to experiment
on dead bodies medical researchers, doctors and so on, surgeons anatomists,
(14:13):
but it was generally illegal to procure them, kind of
like some of those drug laws that say possession of
marijuana is okay, but buying it is a big no no.
So this gray market, slash and legal market of resurrection
men arose, and they were body snatchers. You can argue,
just like we did, Matt, that resurrection men have been
(14:34):
resurrected body brokers who don't like the name body brokers,
by the way, Uh, they'll they'll prefer the term non
transplant tissue banks. They buy and sell human body parts
or entire corpses. And wait, you might be saying, by sell,
how can they get away with that? Didn't you just
say this was illegal? Well, here's the thing. In the
(14:56):
US and several other countries, the organ tram plant trade
is heavily regulated. In theory shout out to our other
episode on the Red Market. But you may be surprised
to learn Uncle Sam does not has never regulated the
use of human body parts in research, training and so on.
(15:17):
So it's kind of like if you think of a
human body like a car. It's kind of like you
you do have to have some paperwork and accountability when
you're selling certain pieces of the car. But if you
just sell the whole car, or you just sell these
pieces that don't qualify, you know, as organs, then do
what you want. You literally have to have no qualification.
(15:40):
I guess. I imagine they figured they've already ticked the
box for that regulation by overseeing the procurement stage, and
then as long as they go through the right channels
to get them to the research institutions, then go with God.
At that point, I'm sure you guys found it as well.
There's only one state I know of that keeps detailed
records on the industry, and that is the state of
(16:01):
New York. They looked at numbers that went from two
thousand and found that companies doing business in New York,
not necessarily based there, but doing business there shipped at
least one hundred thousand body parts across the entire country
over the course of three years, and that's a weird number,
(16:22):
especially when you reference it to the idea that um
only the Harvard or Harvard Professor palaces. Only twenty thousand
were shipped across the US all in all right, so
it seems like there's a lot of disturbing variants in
the estimates. But think about it right now, as McCobb
(16:44):
as it sounds. Whatever you do, whatever your qualifications are,
if you happen to have a box of heads or
a hand of glory and you didn't get it through
the commission of a crime, you can sell it. You
can like go online, just start a square space or something.
(17:05):
I don't think they want that association, but you could
just start a website and sell this stuff and it's
absolutely legal. Surely there's some way to to document chain
of custody. I mean, it's gonna take your word for
it that you didn't get this hand from the commission
of a crime. This is a good question. So the
issue on the table then is that the onus of
(17:28):
responsibility often falls upon the medical institutions accepting the accepting
the remains, so they have their own internal standards which
can vary from one place to the next, such that
they can say, look, this doesn't seem right to us, Well,
we can't, we can't accept this in good faith. It
(17:51):
reminds me of the argument you often hear about, like
campaign donations, where it's like, well, you don't care where
it came from. That's not our job. But but like
it is their job in some respect, and it definitely
is the job of the medical institutions. But it could
also be an argument they make where everything's even on
the up and up, just turns out it was actually
uh from something completely a legitimate Yeah, it's it's passing
(18:15):
the buck of accountability. Right. There's a lot of not
my job is in some of these things, especially when
you get to the non transplant tissue banks or body brokers.
The Reuter's thing that Matt and I referring to is
an excellent deep dive series, uh multipart, and we're gonna
(18:35):
pull from that several times today. One of the first
things I'd like to pull from there is a quote
from Angela MacArthur. So this series, this quote was from Seen,
but the series goes back a few years. Uh. Angela
MacArthur at the time was the director of the body
donation program at University of Minnesota Medical School. She was
(18:57):
also once upon a time the chairperson of the state's
Anatomical Donation Commission, so, in other words, a world class expert.
And what she had to say was not pretty and
it is not nuanced. It is a clear statement of
a problem. She says, quote, the current state of affairs
is a free for all. We're seeing similar problems to
(19:18):
what we saw with grave robbers centuries ago. Uh and
then she continued, I don't know if I can state
this strongly enough. What they, meaning body brokers are doing
is profiting from the sale of humans. Wow. Strong there's
a lot of money to be made. And you know
there's there's some frankly offensive stuff too about this. When
(19:40):
you look at the price per body, you know, because
that's what they're doing. They're putting a price on on
human remains. And Ben you've mentioned like the body's exhibit
oftentimes as the providence of those cadavers being sketchy at best. Yeah,
and that's um the body it's exhibit. Unfortunately, those corpses
(20:04):
were often likely taken from prisoners who did not have
informed consent and their family didn't either. But yet, Matt,
if you want to go into the price of a
body on a body broker market. Let's let's get into it. Yeah,
let's let's quickly do that. According to the seventeen investigation
(20:25):
by Reuter's titled The Body Trade you can find at
reuters dot com, they found that a body broker or
a human tissue trader could sell a single human body
for somewhere between three thousand and five thousand dollars. So
that's like a whole human body. You could also cut
(20:46):
that body up and get part price per part, which
is where you do you get more in totality if
you're selling individual parts than you would as a whole body,
you can it's chop shop rules. I would think you would. Yeah,
I found uh because I was digging in because it
was hard to find the numbers here. So I also
looked at the Rutterer stuff and then went to UM
(21:08):
a source in f D A from one and their
estimate was a little bit higher, and I think I
know why. So they said, in general, you're looking at
around five thousand dollars for a whole body. They said
prices sometimes top ten thousand dollars because body parts like
may fit certain specifications, like we want to look at
(21:30):
this medical condition, and to make it even more ghoulish,
that's if you sell those parts. Body brokers don't always
sell the parts. Sometimes they rent it, sometimes they lease
it and they get it back. Yeah, how is that
even possible? Well, in that Rutter's article, there's an example
in of a shipment to a quote Florida Orthopedic Training
(21:54):
seminar and Orthopedic Training seminar than included twenty seven shoulders. Now,
I can imagine if that training seminar needs just the
specific shoulder for you know, however many hours that's going
to be theoretically as grizzly as it is. You could
then ice put that shoulder back on Ice or those
(22:14):
twenty seven shoulders, and then ship it back to the company.
I imagine it's to demonstrate a medical device of some
kind that could happen to or to train to train
e m T s for instance, the resuscitation UH. Surgeons
also surgeons, I think I put this somewhere else in here,
but surgeons also have um routinely said that three D
(22:36):
modeling or mannekins or simulations is not like the real thing,
and that to do their jobs well, they need to
practice on actual bodies in a way that does not
risk injuring people while they're you know, earning their surgeon stripes.
This is um, this is weird because there is clearly
(22:58):
a need. But oh I, I also need to point
out that source I mentioned earlier is in f d
A is the National Funeral Directors Association, and they're they're
making a lot of moves actually in favor of reining
in the body broker trade. So kudos to them. But
so the issue here is that there is a ton
(23:20):
of money to be made. We talked about it, right,
especially considering that sometimes body brokers or these banks can
function as libraries, lending out components of what was once
a human being. They can make a lot of money,
but there making it without the informed consent of a
(23:40):
deceased person's family, often in very misleading ways. And of
course the deceased person's family is not receiving any compensation
for this. That would be illegal. But this somehow is.
And one thing that's important to recognize about the way
this industry works is it revolves around the ability to
access a large supply of bodies that are essentially free,
(24:05):
that have nowhere, nowhere to go, nowhere to rest, and
what what happens is, uh, these are you know you've
heard the term healthcare, folks think of the term deathcare.
That mean that is an umbrella term encompassing every aspect
of what happens when you have to try to try
(24:27):
to figure out how to move on with your life,
try to figure out how to help someone you love
that has past be put to rest in the manner
of their choosing and respectfully. But and we'll see this
through some specific examples. Um, this hits this hits low
income families really hard. You're desperate. Maybe you've had maybe
(24:51):
you've had a relative or a parent, or a child
or sibling who has struggled with chronic medical condition of
one sort or another all their life. You've paid for
multiple surgeries, right, You've paid from multiple treatments. And this
is the US. So it is where the like that
one of the top causes of bankruptcy as a medical disaster. Right,
(25:12):
So you have drained whatever resources you could access, and
unfortunately your loved one has passed away. You cannot afford
the often unexpectedly high cost of a funeral, more of
of a cremation. And then someone comes along and they
(25:32):
say you know you can donate your loved one's body
to science, will take care of the expenses, and we
will connect them with someone who will help make the
world a better place for the generations to come after.
And then when they're done, when this operation is done,
we will cremate the remains for you. We will give
(25:53):
them to you free of charge. And isn't that something
your loved one would have wanted to do to help
other people? Are you saying they are like reps for
these organizations that seek these situations out? Oh yes, yeah,
And often it will be in the form of just
a little slip of paper or brochure that ends up
(26:15):
at an actual funeral home. Not always, but sometimes at
a funeral home as uh an option see right burial
cremation or c right. And this this all means that often,
due to the way health and death are priced in
the United States. Strange to say it that way, but
(26:36):
it's not hyperbolic. This means that often families feel they
have no choice other than accepting the help of a
body broker. And that's where it leads us to controversy. Corruption, conspiracy, crime,
Obviously inequality huge part of this, no argument against it,
(26:57):
but Before we continue, I do think it's important to
note that not all of these body brokers, these non
transplant tissue banks, are inherently sinister. This is a thing
that needs to happen. Donated bodies are an essential role
in training, education, research. This is why a lot of
people aren't dead today. To be honest with you, Well,
(27:17):
I feel like we lead with that for sure. I mean,
the idea of this profession or this the need for
these go betweens is not inherently malevolent. Somebody has to
act as the you know, lays on between the families
of the departed and where those bodies end up. And
usually they're just satisfying the wishes of that person. Yeah. Well,
(27:39):
and and think about the good bends talking about we
mentioned at the top a little bit the cadaver's body parts.
They're used by medical students all the time. Medical students
they need human bodies and sometimes just body parts to
actually study the techniques that they're learning in medical school
so that you can apply them later. Um, there's I mean,
(28:03):
there's so many different uses for for a cadaver in
the medical field that if you did not have them,
we would be out of look as humans like we
mentioned surgeons, mentioned paramedics. You shall also talk about how
people come up with the idea of new surgical instruments.
(28:24):
You you certainly wouldn't want to be having open heart
surgery and then be the person who died on the
table that helped the surgeon figure out, oh, there's a
better widget for this. You would like for that widget
to already be there. What it's time for you to
go under the knife. So this does make sense. It
teaches us about implants, techniques that could be evolved, new medicines,
(28:48):
and treatment for disease like serious stuff. So the needs there,
and we know this practice does produce measurable, significant, very
positive results for living people. The problem is there is
so much stuff about this trade that we do not know,
including people who are experts in studying it, like Ray
(29:12):
Madeoff as a Boston College law school professor who studies
the way that the legal system treats the remains of
dead people. Yeah, and I mean, and if this guy
is open in the way that we're about to point
out about what he doesn't know, I mean, I think
that says a lot. He says, quote, we know very
little about who is acquiring these bodies and what they
(29:32):
are doing with them. And then back to the Reuter's
piece that we've been talking about, a journalist by the
name of Brian grow He actually tried a little experiment
where they contacted a broker in Tennessee and after just
a few emails, they who were able to buy a
cervical spine and to human heads. He uh yeah, yeah.
(29:53):
And one of those surgical instruments that or or i
let's say a class of surgical instruments that was developed
through the use of bodies and testing on bodies was
something like the saws that are used in surgeries, surgical saws,
various types of bone saws, and things like that, specifically
saws that were designed to cut a human body open
(30:17):
and cut it up perhaps into parts, or amputate a
limb or something like that. As part of that Ruyter's investigation,
they found that those same, uh, those same tools that
were developed for working on bodies are often too expensive
for the companies that are being started by body brokers.
The body broker smaller companies, so they found that they
(30:40):
had actually been using chainsaws to cut up human bodies
after they were donated to their companies at least one
grizzly case. Yeah, and that guy was also renting body
parts out. Yes. I also want to add, so another
little piece of further digging I did is you always
want to try to go to the source of either
(31:02):
side of an argument. So if you want to see
people who are championing these tissue banks, you want to
visit the American Association of Tissue Banks. And they have
they have they break down the needs that we're describing,
but they, I would argue, kind of gloss over some
(31:23):
of the problems. Let's let's go back to this, the
idea that just if you'r you maybe just a few
emails away from finding someone who says, yes, I can
get you a spine, I can get you ahead. How
many heads do you want? You know what I mean?
And then you started talking price breaks or whatever. But Grow,
(31:48):
being a journalist, was horrified and I think heartbroken to
learn the origin of one of these bodies. The the
outfit that sold it to Restore Life USA. UH didn't
know that they were selling this to a reporter. He
found out the spine came from a young man named
Cody Saunders who had the struggle that I described earlier.
(32:11):
He died on his twenty four birthday after a long
battle with congenital conditions like a hole in his heart,
longstanding kidney issues. This poor guy had gone through sixty
six surgeries, more than seventeen hundred rounds of dialysis. And again,
the US is a lot of things, but it is
(32:34):
not good at healthcare right Like poverty is a big
cause of death, especially if you look at prevented a
medicine in this country. Anyway, even if you're a relatively
well off family, this kind of medical expense can put
you in a really tough spot. In the Saunders family
didn't have the money for burial cremation when Cody passed
(32:56):
away of a heart attacks, so they thought the course
for them to help people, and they thought, you know,
this is what our son would want to was to
donate his body to this outfit, Restore Life USA, which
is a for profit organization. The month after he died,
Restore Life sold cody spine to Reuters for three dollars
(33:20):
plus shipping. That's all it took. And I always assumed,
I guess that that it would be much more expensive later. Uh,
these same reporters would go on to buy those two
heads from the same place, and they consulted experts and
they said, okay, look here's what we got. You know
what I mean, here's what they went to people who
would be in charge of ethically sourcing human body parts
(33:45):
for medical institution and two A one everyone they that
they asked, each individual said this paperwork is crazy, sloppy,
there's not a good chain of custody. Everything's wrong with this.
I don't know if I, in my position at this school,
or at this university, or at this UH institution, I
(34:07):
don't know if I could ethically accept this. And that
is only one example of what we found is is
a very widespread process. I suggest we pause for a
moment for word from our sponsors and then dive deeper
into the dilemmas because there are even more. Unfortunately, this
is We're going to try to do some lighthearted episodes later, folks,
(34:36):
and we have returned again. As we said, there are
mission critical problems with the system as it stands today.
Even a lot of tissue banks will say the same thing.
They may be for the record talking about their competitors,
but everybody knows there's a problem. These families are not paid,
but these for profit bank brokers are definitely making a
(34:57):
ghoulish amount of cash. One of those sources I referenced earlier,
the American Association of Tissue Banks to trade organization representing
these folks UH says the following. When they say, how
does in a d O that's the acronym they prefer,
a non transplant anatomical donation organization? How do they collect funding?
(35:19):
Their quote is in order to sustain a mission of
helping donors and their loved ones fulfill their wishes to
aid researchers, educators, and clinicians in advancing science of medicine,
most often at no cost to the donor or his
or her loved ones. In a d O, s must
fund their operations by charging a fee for service to
(35:40):
those who are requesting and being provided non transplant gifts.
So they're basically saying what we said. They're just trying
to make it sound a bit more diplomatic, right, Am
I reading that correctly? Yeah? We canna, that's right. I
kind of wonder what their balance sheets look like, because
obviously they're providing value to some of these lower income
(36:01):
families in exchange for their loved ones by you know,
offering the cremation and the funeral process and all of
that stuff to pay for, Like, is that considered the
cost of doing business? Is that like recouped? Like I
just be really fascinated to see what their ledgers look like.
That's if they're actually using a you know, a standard crematorium, right,
(36:22):
an actual thing that's meant to cremate human bodies. Because
that's not always the case, because those are expensive as hell,
and there are other sales burned bodies with a blowtorch.
What are we talking about here? Back to that Reuter's article,
they mentioned a couple of instances where bodies were being
(36:44):
cremated if you call that cremated within medical waste incinerators,
which is just it's a different it's a different system,
and I don't know it. I couldn't tell you the difference,
but but it does probably mean that the cremains are
not You're right, you're getting some stuff your loved ones
in part, but probably some other mixings. And there you're
(37:07):
you're often only getting Yeah, this is why I want
to say, you're often you're often getting adulterated remains. You
could compare it to a mass grave at times, uh,
which I was on the fence about mentioning on air,
but it's true. Uh, you're also getting only a portion
of the person's body being cremated and the rest being
(37:29):
shipped off. This is this is a ghoulish way to
make money for a lot of um bad faith actors.
They also take a lot of agency away from the
family of a donor. You know, it is not infrequent
for body brokers to obtain a corpse through fraudulent means,
misleading the loved ones and the survivors. There's another story
(37:52):
I saw multiple places. Uh, Doris Stauffer when she passed away.
Her family, in particular, her son donated her body to
science because Doris they thought would be able to help
with further research into Alzheimer's. And there's a lot of exciting,
promising research going into Alzheimer's right now. So this makes
(38:15):
sense and it's been going on for years. So her son,
Jim Stoffer, contacts an outfit called Biological Resource Center. What
do we always say about organizations with cartoonishly vague, innocuous names,
Just watch out, just watch out for him. Uh. Yeah,
this was a company locally based in Arizona. The story
(38:36):
takes place in Sunrise, Arizona. Uh, and they brokeer the
donation of human bodies for research. When he contacted them,
they were on the ground in an hour, dispatching a
driver to collect the body. So he signs a form
keep in minds in the depths of grief his mother
has passed away. Uh, and he authorizes medical research on
(38:57):
her body. And then importantly he x a specific box
on this form. It's a boilerplate for that prohibits military
traffic safety and other quote non medical experiments. Ten days
later he and his family receiver cremated remains, and then
later they learned what actually happened. Yeah, So workers at
(39:19):
b R c UM detached one of Doris Stuffer's hands
for cremation, as you mentioned, only getting partial remains back UM.
After sending those ashes back to our son, the company
sold and shipped the rest of her body to a
taxpayer funded research project for the U. S. Army. So
(39:41):
that box that Jim Stouffer ticked clearly either they didn't
care or it was not legally binding. It was just
kind of like you know, for optics. Her brain was
never used for Alzheimer's research. Instead, Stuffer's body became part
of an army experiment to measure damage caused by roadside bombs.
(40:04):
She was one of at least twenty other cadavers that
were used in this same way. I don't know that
we're we we necessarily know the source of the other bodies.
Was this all through the same organization unknown? Not necessarily
It's possible, but it also wouldn't be uncommon for there
to be multiple contractors or sourcers here. Uh, sourcers, I
(40:28):
mean not sourcerers. Just really quickly, guys, I didn't realize
that human remains would be used for what was it,
quote traffic safety? Uh, like testing crash test dummies. I've
got a car stuff episode on that. Corpses were used
for a while to test you know, all those old
(40:48):
car commercials where you see the car hitting the wall.
They used to until they built crash test dummies, they
used to just use corpses. Also, I want to take
out a moment to shout out Projects Sunshine. We did
an episode that if you would like to learn more
about the unethical ways in which your government uses human bodies. Uh,
and not just it's not restricted to the US. Uh.
(41:09):
And it's not something that happens as a historical footnote.
But yeah, they're used with children too. Yes, that was
usually using the body parts of children to test radiation.
Do we know around what year the testing was done
there on Doris, but it sounds like it was, you know,
research for maybe around the Afghanistan or Iraq wars um
(41:33):
just some imagining roadside bombs where they were very interested
in that at the time. Let's see, so it was
twenty I want to say twenty fifteen or so. No,
I want to say maybe a little before twenty fifteen.
So maybe the good news is that still for the
(41:54):
still for family. Did later see justice because there was
a lawsuit against Biologic Resource Center and it's a biological
resource center and its owner one Stephen Gore talk about
nominative determinism. Gore guilty to UH running in a legal
operation because of the fraud he was committing UH and
(42:15):
he got he played guilty in twenty fifteen, but he
was sentenced to probation. Although I think it's hard to
argue this is a victimless crime. I think it would
be hard to swallow an argument, but I could imagine
the argument being made. Yeah, yeah, too true, I mean,
and it is very difficult to articulate how horrific this
(42:38):
can be for survivors of these situations brokers as we
established con turner profit of thousands of dollars for each
body donated, because their margin is so low, right, and
because we know a little bit about their profit margin.
I'm not saying the arguments about being servants of a
(43:01):
greater good are wrong. I'm not even saying they're insincere,
but it's a little tougher to believe them, you know
what I mean. I think you were right to be skeptical.
And eventually the good news is more and more people
began to listen to the experts who were saying, this
is basically the wild West in its terrible way. Something
has to be done. So politicians began to further understand
(43:24):
the extent of this problem, and they started to take
legal action. In the US, we're proud to report just
last year, uh Congress has brought more transparency and accountability
to this grizzly industry. Or they're trying to through the
introduction of something called the Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act,
which you could read in full available online. It's not
(43:47):
a law yet, but it very much should be. And
it seems to be gathering a lot of support, which
is positive. Yes, we think about where we were, guys,
there were there were private companies popping up all over
the country here in the US that were new body
brokers with just a name. You start a business. There
was no regulation really, and you what you needed were
(44:09):
a couple of freezers, maybe you know, an array of freezers,
let's say, depending on how many bodies you wanted to
handle at a time, and at least one cargo van
or shipping vehicle of some sort. And that's literally all
you need. The actual product that you're gonna be brokering
and selling gets donated to you. Right, it's free. Then
(44:33):
you get to make straight profit off that thing. Uh.
The and then shipping costs is literally your only other issue.
It's crazy how much money could be made for very
little investment upfront. And it, Thank goodness there's some kind
of regulation happening well on the way. Hopefully it does
(44:54):
end up actual regulation. But but fortunately for what I
would typify as the the larger majority of good guys
in this scenario, uh, hopefully for decent people. Uh, you'll
take a little bit of um, a little bit of
reassurance knowing that even the most uh Makavellian politician has
(45:20):
to understand the voting against the bill like this political suicide,
you know what I mean? Like how big is the grave?
Robbie Lobby is the kind of question they'll have back,
you know, in the back rooms of the campaign office. Well,
I think one thing we haven't really talked too much
about is just the fact that for not only is
(45:40):
there grief involved in people, you know, maybe of lower
means being taken advantage of when they're at their you know,
maybe lowest point, but also just the idea of religion
and what the way a body has handled means for
individuals religions, and how the reality of what's actually happening
(46:01):
once people find out or if they ever find out,
it could absolutely negate these deepest, most you know, sacredly
held beliefs and and could cause some serious trauma and
concern with individuals that are worried now maybe their loved
ones aren't transitioning into the afterlife properly because of the
way their corpse was handled. Well, you know, it's interesting
to say that because I had wanted to, I had
(46:24):
looked into that as well, and a little bit of
it was cutting for time. But one of one of
the most amazing things is the way that religions interact
with the modern day. And there's a pretty there's a
pretty impressive argument that a lot of religions have made
about what they see as being a good person. Because
(46:44):
you might be surprised to find that some religions that
have very specific requirements for how a body is treated
after after death or after physical death, I should say, uh,
they allow for organ donation, they allow for the contribution
of a greater good, and and the leaders of these
(47:05):
schools of spiritual thought have spent a great deal of
time thinking about this. And I commend that decision, you know,
to to say, like, hey, what is what is more
noble than than saying I know, I know my heart's
been through a lot, but I would love if it
(47:27):
was beating for you. You know, I think that's that's
pretty impressive. I think you have another career ahead of
you as a greeting card writer. Ben, Thank you. You know,
I almost did get a job one time writing for Hallmark,
but they wanted you to move uh to like Hallmark
head course, Yeah, I know, I know, right, But that
was be where everybody worked from home. At this point,
(47:49):
maybe it's important for us to say that the future
of the body broker industry, I don't know. It's tough
to predict where it's gonna go, because again, there's a
genuine need. People who are listening to the show today,
Some of our fellow conspiracy realists are alive because of
the research and the discoveries that came from this these practices.
(48:14):
Uh And honestly, unless something big changes in the United
States specifically, families often are gonna need some kind of
financial assistance to bury or cremate their loved ones with
or ter them with the respect that you know they deserve,
that every human being deserves. So how do we how
do we ensure those wishes are upheld? How can we
(48:36):
help both the living and the dead have full knowledge
of what they're agreeing to? I don't know. These aren't
rhetorical questions. I just I don't know that I don't
know if anyone knows the answer. Somehow make funerals less expensive?
Good God, I mean, but it all comes down to
a free market economy. Like if you're able to set
up a business that does a service that you are
(48:58):
paid for then you have a right to ours what
you want for it. You know, it's hard. It's a
hard thing to police. I guess that's what I'm getting at,
unless you may get part of a government entity and
just regulate the hell out of it. I'll give you
a quote from a dude named Steve Palmer, who, according
to the Reuter's investigation, is an Arizona mortician who serves
on that thing you're talking about, Ben, the National Funeral
(49:20):
Directors Association. It's he serves on their policy board. His
quote is, some funeral home directors are saying cremation isn't
paying the bills anymore. So let me see if I
can help people harvest some body parts. Okay, then yeah.
Check out our episode on the funeral industry as well,
and thanks to all the thanks to all the people
(49:43):
in the funeral industry who wrote to us about that
and gave us an insider peak. Uh. There is gonna
be one other phrase that you'll hear associated with body brokers.
It describes a different, also at times equally unethical profession.
It is the const apt of getting kickbacks for referring
(50:03):
clients to specific rehab facilities when they struggle with substance abuse.
Uh and that is a huge business we talked about
in the past. I'm trying to I'm trying to find
an ending for this episode that is something better than
people are terrible. Uh yeah, there we go. Hashtag not
(50:27):
all people are terrible. Funerals should be less expensive. I
endorsed this message and this has been endorsed by Matt
Frederick first of his name for It's been endorsed by
Matt Frederick for President. If you want to find out
more about our dark money political action campaign to get
our pal Matt elected to the highest office in the land,
(50:50):
or if you want to give us your thoughts on
the ethical dilemma of this trade, on the potential for
just heartbreaking corruption and conspiracy versus the potential for enormous
breakthroughs in medicine. Um. We we'd love to hear from you.
You can find us, like Noel said, at Matt Frederick
(51:12):
for President dot com or we adopt we are my
entire we are for profit presidential campaign. Uh so, and
our only donor is Illumination Global Unlimited. Don't don't worry
about that though. It's fine, yes, but if you if
(51:33):
you don't want to dive with us into the world
of crooked politics just yet. There are also plenty of
other places you can find us online. Yep, you can
find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter,
and you can find us on YouTube at the handle
Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram or Conspiracy Stuff Show. If you
don't want to go on the internet at all, you
can use a telephone give us a call. Yes, you
can't call us, but before you do that, consider buying
(51:56):
our book. Just think about it. I don't know, give
to give it a thought. Yeah, there's a book. We
wrote one. It's available. You can preorder it right now.
It'll get to you in October. Uh. That would be
an amazing way to support our show. If you choose
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(52:16):
You can. You can call us any time you wish
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Do whatever you want. Most importantly, let us know if
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(52:37):
give yourself a cool nickname, tell us what's on your mind,
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You can write out the story in full. You can
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(52:59):
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(53:37):
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