How the body of an Arizona great-grandmother ended up as part of a U.S. Army blast test - Polidicks

[t]http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-bodybrokers-industry/mastheads/PHO103.jpg[/t] [QUOTE]GRANDMA D: A picture of Doris Stauffer when she was 16 years old. When she died at age 74, her family donated her body for medical research. Instead, Stauffer ended up as part of a military experiment. REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]SURPRISE, Arizona – Jim Stauffer thought he was doing the right thing. He had cared for his elderly mother, Doris, throughout her harrowing descent into dementia. In 2013, when she passed away at age 74, he decided to donate her brain to science. He hoped the gift might aid the search for a cure to Alzheimer’s disease. At a nurse’s suggestion, the family contacted Biological Resource Center, a local company that brokered the donation of human bodies for research. Within the hour, BRC dispatched a driver to collect Doris. Jim Stauffer signed a form authorizing medical research on his mother’s body. He also checked a box prohibiting military, traffic-safety and other non-medical experiments. Ten days later, Jim received his mother’s cremated remains. He wasn't told how her body had been used. Records reviewed by Reuters show that BRC workers detached one of Doris Stauffer’s hands for cremation. After sending those ashes back to her son, the company sold and shipped the rest of Stauffer’s body to a taxpayer-funded research project for the U.S. Army. Her brain never was used for Alzheimer’s research. Instead, Stauffer’s body became part of an Army experiment to measure damage caused by roadside bombs. Internal BRC and military records show that at least 20 other bodies were also used in the blast experiments without permission of the donors or their relatives, a violation of U.S. Army policy. BRC sold donated bodies like Stauffer’s for $5,893 each. Army officials involved in the project said they never received the consent forms that donors or their families had signed. Rather, the officials said they relied on assurances from BRC that families had agreed to let the bodies be used in such experiments. BRC, which sold more than 20,000 parts from some 5,000 human bodies over a decade, is no longer in business. Its former owner, Stephen Gore, pleaded guilty to fraud last year. In a statement to Reuters, Gore said that he always tried to honor the wishes of donors and sent consent forms when researchers requested them. Jim Stauffer learned of his mother’s fate not from BRC or the Army but from a Reuters reporter. When told, Stauffer curled his lip in anger and clutched his wife Lisa’s arm. “We did right,” Lisa reassured him. “They just did not honor our wishes.” The story of how an Arizona grandmother’s remains came to be used in a Pentagon experiment shines a spotlight on a growing but little-known industry: the trade in human cadavers and body parts. The body-brokering business is distinct from organ transplantation, in which hearts, livers, eyes and lungs are carefully removed from the dead to extend or enrich the lives of the living. It also is separate from the business of using skin, tendon or bone from cadavers to repair joints or other parts of the body. Those practices are strictly regulated by U.S. law. In contrast, the buying and selling of human bodies not used for transplant receives scant oversight. No federal law regulates body brokers like BRC, and no U.S. government agency monitors what happens to cadavers pledged for use in medical education and research. “It is not illegal to sell a whole body or the parts of a body for research or education,” said University of Iowa law professor Sheldon F. Kurtz, who helped modify the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which has been adopted by 46 states. Although the act was updated in 2006, Kurtz said, “the issue of whole bodies or body parts for research or education never came up during our discussions.” Since then, the body trade has become big business. Only one state, New York, keeps detailed records on the industry. According to the most recent data available, companies that did business in New York shipped at least 100,000 body parts across the country from 2011 to 2014. Reuters obtained the data, which have never been made public, from the state’s health department.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Federal authorities began investigating BRC in 2011. That year, a Detroit body broker from a company called International Biological Inc was stopped by U.S. customs agents as he crossed the border from Ontario. He had 10 human heads with him. According to an FBI affidavit, agents traced one of the heads to BRC. Within a year, investigators had identified at least 250 suspect body parts sold by BRC to the Detroit broker. Records from the Detroit and Phoenix cases show that thousands of bodies donated for research and education were dismembered and then sold or leased, often for commercial purposes. In January 2016, the Detroit broker and his wife were arrested by the FBI on fraud charges related to their practices at International Biological. The broker, Arthur Rathburn, has pleaded not guilty and is jailed awaiting trial. His wife, Elizabeth Rathburn, pleaded guilty to a single fraud charge but has not been sentenced. Arthur Rathburn leased human heads, torsos and other body parts for medical and dental training in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Greece and Israel, authorities said. In 2012, two coolers that contained eight bloody heads and were addressed to Rathburn were seized at the Detroit airport. Government documents unsealed this year also allege that Arthur Rathburn’s inventory included more than 100 body parts infected with hepatitis, HIV, sepsis, meningitis, the life-threatening bacteria MRSA, and the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis. Rathburn’s lawyer, Byron Pitts, said his client committed no crime. “I think the government has overstepped and I don’t think they are going to be able to prove their charges,” Pitts said. In a court filing this year, Pitts noted that the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act does not prohibit the sale of body parts and said Rathburn should not be held accountable criminally for paperwork errors or the actions of others, including BRC. BRC also shipped infected body parts, according to Arizona state investigation summaries reviewed by Reuters.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/[/url]

[QUOTE]BRC, which sold more than 20,000 parts from some 5,000 human bodies over a decade, is no longer in business. Its former owner, Stephen [B]Gore[/B], pleaded guilty to fraud last year.[/QUOTE] Let's face it, the man had a name to live up to.

someone in the pentagon is getting fired, even if its not their fault, someone's getting fired today

[QUOTE=Sableye;51578054]someone in the pentagon is getting fired, even if its not their fault, someone's getting fired today[/QUOTE] Maybe fired in the most litteral of the senses.

Reminder that blast research with cadavers involve drop towers and HyGE and ServoSleds, not Humvees strapped with explosives. They are tamer than you think. PMHSs (Post-Mortem Human Subjects) are rarely used in full scale tests.

Perhaps a Congressional audit of the Pentagon would put these kinds of abuses to rest.

Well it sounds like the issues here were with the third party body brokering company outright disregarding the requests from the family of the deceased, not the Pentagon itself, and the CEO of the company already got slammed for fraud

[QUOTE=Chonch;51578127]Perhaps a Congressional audit of the Pentagon would put these kinds of abuses to rest.[/QUOTE] [quote] Army officials involved in the project said they never received the consent forms that donors or their families had signed. Rather, the officials said they relied on assurances from BRC that families had agreed to let the bodies be used in such experiments. BRC, which sold more than 20,000 parts from some 5,000 human bodies over a decade, is no longer in business. Its former owner, Stephen Gore, pleaded guilty to fraud last year. In a statement to Reuters, Gore said that he always tried to honor the wishes of donors and sent consent forms when researchers requested them. [/quote]

[QUOTE=Jund;51578258][QUOTE]Army officials involved in the project said they never received the consent forms that donors or their families had signed. Rather, the officials said they relied on assurances from BRC that families had agreed to let the bodies be used in such experiments. BRC, which sold more than 20,000 parts from some 5,000 human bodies over a decade, is no longer in business. Its former owner, Stephen Gore, pleaded guilty to fraud last year. In a statement to Reuters, Gore said that he always tried to honor the wishes of donors and sent consent forms when researchers requested them.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE] This is why you need to get documentation for everything.

[quote]He also checked a box prohibiting military, traffic-safety and other non-medical experiments.[/quote] [del]And this is where someone fucked up and ignored that.[/del] Oh nevermind, they just weren't given the forms. Even better.