The scandal that ravaged the UCLA Willed Body Program this March
is now at a calm, and the tarnished program’s future seems to
hinge on an unfinished report from former Gov. George
Deukmejian.
Deukmejian’s report is supposed to give suggestions
regarding the future of willed body programs throughout the UC
system.
“Really, there’s not much to say at this point. We
are working on it,” Deukmejian said. “We haven’t
completed our efforts yet.”
Deukmejian was asked by the UC regents to oversee reforms to the
Willed Body Program after the director of the program, Henry Reid,
was arrested for selling donated body parts in March.
Reid’s arrest unleashed an onslaught of scrutiny to willed
body programs across the nation, highlighting problems within both
the programs and the black-market trade of body parts to larger
corporations.
A court injunction has closed the once prestigious
program’s doors at UCLA for now, but whether UCLA’s
program will reopen, and how the rest of the willed body programs
within the University of California will run, remains
uncertain.
“We’d all like to know what’s going on,”
said Milton Friedman, a lawyer who is involved in three cases
involving the UCLA Willed Body Program.
Some lawyers say the program should be closed permanently, but
Friedman said it is important to see what is in the former
governor’s report before making any decisions. He added that
UCLA’s program, the country’s first of its kind when it
was created in 1950, serves important academic services for the
community.
Deukmejian gave few details about the future contents of the
report or how he was conducting his research.
He said he has been given a report on all of the programs within
the UC system, and that he has visited UCLA’s program.
There are four other willed body programs within the UC ““
at the San Diego, San Francisco, Irvine and Davis campuses.
Deukmejian said he won’t be visiting all of them, but he
plans to look outside the UC for advice.
“I am not going to rely just on university sources in the
course of what we’re doing. It takes some time to identify
some appropriate either individuals or organizations on the outside
that can be of help in this area,” Deukmejian said.
Roxanne Moster, assistant director of health science
communications, said Deukmejian’s report would likely come
out this fall.
The UCLA Willed Body Program was first investigated in 1993 when
a medical waste container with a mix of human ashes and other
hospital materials broke apart in the Santa Monica Bay.
Attorneys representing families who had relatives involved in
the program sued UCLA in 1996.
Reid was hired in 1997 to clean up and reform the program. This
year, Reid and Ernest Nelson, who is not affiliated with UCLA, were
arrested in conjunction with the sale of body parts that allegedly
dates back a number of years.
Friedman said two additional cases were filed in March: one
representing families who had relatives donated to the program
since 1998 and one class-action suit against some of the corporate
entities involved, including Johnson & Johnson.
These cases seem to be in a period of calm as well, as neither
one has been assigned a judge, and actual trials will most likely
not start for a couple of years, Friedman said.
Wendy Sharp, a divorce lawyer who lives in Santa Monica, said
the scandal has emotionally hurt her family.
Two of Sharp’s grandparents donated to the UCLA Willed
Body Program while Reid was director.
She said it upset her that something her grandparents had chosen
to do to benefit society had been transformed into something
“mercenary and sneaky.” Nevertheless, she doesn’t
feel as though the program at UCLA should be closed forever.
“I think the whole intention and purpose is still there.
It’s for the betterment of the school and science and
humanity that it continue. I think that there has to be some kind
of oversight,” Sharp said.
“It should be stopped until it’s guaranteed that it
actually works.”