Cut up and leased out, the bodies of the poor suffer a final indignity in Texas

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-north-texas-corpses-dissected-unclaimed-bodies-rcna170478

DALLAS — Long before his bleak final years, when he struggled with mental illness and lived mostly on the streets, Victor Carl Honey joined the Army, serving honorably for nearly a decade. And so, when his heart gave out and he died alone 30 years later, he was entitled to a burial with military honors.

Instead, without his consent or his family’s knowledge, the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office gave his body to a state medical school, where it was frozen, cut into pieces and leased out across the country.

A Swedish medical device maker paid $341 for access to Honey’s severed right leg to train clinicians to harvest veins using its surgical tool. A medical education company spent $900 to send his torso to Pittsburgh so trainees could practice implanting a spine stimulator. And the U.S. Army paid $210 to use a pair of bones from his skull to educate military medical personnel at a hospital near San Antonio.

In the name of scientific advancement, clinical education and fiscal expediency, the bodies of the destitute in the Dallas-Fort Worth region have been routinely collected from hospital beds, nursing homes and homeless encampments and used for training or research without their consent — and often without the approval of any survivors, an NBC News investigation found.

[duncang]

1. There needs to be jail time

For abuse of a corpse and a full investigation of the examiner’s office.

[JMCKUSICK]

10. Would this be a RICO candidate?

[walkingman]

2. I have a suspiscion that this happens more often than is realized.

Saves the cost of cremation by giving the unclaimed bodies to a medical school, which would otherwise be the counties' responsibility to dispose of.

I don't know this, just my hunch.

[Bayard]

3. This is a horrifying story

This man had a family who loved him, and had been trying to find him. Numerous other such cases are cited.

As one person said--Its not much different than grave robbing.

[2naSalit]

4. That state...

Has been pushing hard to become a guaranteed shithole in so many ways. I can't say that I could justify ever going there, even to get to the other side, ever again. I don't know that I would make it out.

[Solly Mack]

5. Damn

[OldSWODog]

6. this is AFU on so many levels

couldn't DCME have, at the very least, saved something for cremation and inurnment with military honors...too complicated, I guess...Fair Winds, Victor Carol Honey...I'm imagining Taps and a three volley salute now...I have stood and rendered a final salute...OSD

[Dem2theMax]

7. I'm beyond livid reading about this horrifying story.

How the hell are they getting away with it?



I had a cousin die a few years ago, in California. No family members were notified until he had been cremated and buried. Thankfully, he was buried in a military cemetery, as he had served in the Navy during the Vietnam war.

At least the state did right by him, although not so much by surviving relatives. He had no immediate family members, just a lot of cousins.

If I lived in Texas, and that happened to one of my loved ones, can you say class action lawsuit?

[RussBLib]

8. At least they waited till he was dead

(sort of)

[LeftInTX]

9. And to think there's a waiting list to donate your body to science!

Seriously, that's what I wanted to do, but was told they had a waiting list. Then, I read this!

[Fla Dem]

11. Absolutely disgusting. More than one person had to know this was going on.

It took a woman who was searching for her sick son to expose this deplorable activity.

Kind of like, If this body is not claimed in 10 days, even if we have "next of kin" information, we shall sell the body to make money.

[Faux pas]

12. ...

and