University police made a second arrest Sunday in an ongoing
investigation of UCLA’s willed body program, the director of
which was taken into custody Saturday for allegedly selling body
parts from cadavers donated to the university.
Ernest Nelson, 46, who is not a UCLA employee, was arrested in
Rancho Cucamonga shortly after 7 a.m. Sunday on charges of
knowingly receiving stolen property. Nelson is scheduled to appear
in court on Tuesday and is being held on $30,000 bail.
The director of the willed body program, Henry Reid, 54, was
released around 2:30 a.m. Sunday after he posted $20,000 bail. Reid
was arrested by university police at his home in Anaheim on
Saturday afternoon. He is charged with felony grand theft.
Reid and another unidentified UCLA employee have been put on
leave by the university, and police are investigating whether the
two falsified documents to sell cadaver parts for their own profit
over a five-year period. University police would not comment on
whether the unidentified employee will be arrested anytime in the
near future.
“We are cooperating fully with the police department, and
will share more information as soon as police assure us it will not
jeopardize their investigation,” said J. Thomas Rosenthal,
associate vice chancellor and chief medical officer of UCLA’s
David Geffen School of Medicine, in a statement Saturday.
“At this stage, we must do nothing to undermine the
integrity of the investigation,” Rosenthal said.
University police searched Reid’s house and a nearby shed
after the arrest Saturday and reportedly left with several
boxes.
Nancy Greenstein, UCPD director of police community services,
said police are just beginning their investigation.
UCPD became aware of the theft nearly two weeks ago after the
medical center conducted an internal investigation.
UCLA’s willed body program, the first in the nation, was
founded in 1950. The institute receives around 175 bodies each year
and has a waiting list of 11,000 people who are willing to provide
their bodies for medical research and education.
While one of the most prestigious institutions of its kind, the
program has come under fire in recent years amid accusations of
unethical and illegal practices.
The program was first investigated in 1993 when a medical waste
container broke apart in the Santa Monica Bay. The container had a
combination of ashes and other hospital materials inside.
In 1996, attorneys representing the families of nearly 18,000
participants in the willed body program sued UCLA for handling the
cadavers “without dignity.”
The attorneys in that case said UCLA stuffed some corpses with
medical byproducts in a process called “canoeing.” The
lawsuit, which is still pending, said the university often cremated
the cadavers in groups, dumping the ashes in garbage drums along
with syringes and scalpels. The remains were sometimes dumped in
the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Bay.
“The families were promised when the bodies came in that
the remains would be disposed of in a dignified and humane
manner,” said James Terwilleger, then-vice provost for
administration at the School of Medicine in a 1996 interview with
the Daily Bruin. “It was clear that the remains would be
cremated unless the family wanted them back, and that the remains
would be treated with dignity upon disposal.”
Attorneys filed suit against UCLA in 1996, and a year later,
Reid was hired as director and was thought to have cleaned up the
department.
Court Commissioner Bruce Mitchell tentatively ruled as recently
as Feb. 10 that UCLA had proven the program was working well under
Reid, according to a Los Angeles Times article published
Sunday.
“We were very proud of the steps that Henry Reid convinced
everyone he had taken, and we frankly are devastated,” Louis
Marlin, a university lawyer, told the Times.
Former Gov. George Deukmejian has agreed to head reform of the
willed body program, and the medical school’s associate vice
chancellor, J. Thomas Rosenthal, is temporarily taking care of its
day-to-day operations.
“We want to assure the public that we will do everything
in our power to eliminate whatever inadequacies that existed to
ensure that the UCLA willed body program is one that is worthy of
the trust given by those who generously donate their remains for
the benefit of medical education and research,” Rosenthal
said in a statement.
Pharmaceutical companies and medical instrument firms are just a
few of the organizations that use cadavers in their products.
It is against the law to sell body parts for profit, but
middlemen are allowed to charge “reasonable” fees to
cover their costs, according to the Times article. The line of what
is reasonable and what isn’t has become blurred.
Also according to the Times, dozens of cadavers had been sold
from UCLA, and the overall demand for bodies’ parts has
increased, driving market prices upward.
Other universities have dealt with similar problems, though none
seem to shadow UCLA’s.
In 1999, the director of the willed body program at UC Irvine
was fired because of accusations surrounding the selling of body
parts, and in 2002 an employee at the University of Texas medical
branch was fired for similar charges.
With reports from Bruin wire services.