This article is part of Dealing the Dead, a series that investigates the use of unclaimed organizations for medical research.
Texas lawmakers moved this week to ban practices this week, fearing a medical school’s NBC News investigation that benefited from groups of poor and vulnerable people. Explicit consent.
The proposal is a direct response to NBC News’ Dealing the Dead series, revealing how the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth has taken hundreds of unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties. It has been revealed that it has been done. Medical institution companies, other universities, the Army. Reporters have discovered dozens of families who claimed the bodies of loved ones and said they gave them a proper funeral if they were told. Some were still searching for relatives and didn’t know they had died.
Sen. Tan Parker, who introduced the bill to the Texas Legislature on Wednesday, said he had no idea what the Health Sciences Center was doing until he saw an investigation by NBC News in September. The findings infuriated and disgusted him, he said.
“All Texans deserve the dignity of life and death, and the rights of families to determine how the relics of loved ones are processed must be protected,” he said, part of Dallas and Tarrant Counties. said Parker, a Republican, who the district includes in a statement. “There is no need to worry about the body of a loved one being taken away, torn apart and lease without any effort to notify the next relative. The law will completely end that practice and will be in Texas. “The laws support the highest ethical standards and ensure that they respect the dignity of all individuals.”
In addition to the law, NBC News’ reports have caused drastic changes. The Health Science Center has suspended its body donation program, fired the officials who led it and said it would stop accepting unclaimed bodies. Boston’s scientific and other medical devices and research companies, as well as the Army, said they would reconsider their arrangements with the Center and take steps to prevent the use of unclaimed bodies in the future. Council members sought answers, and Tarrant County officials adopted policies to ensure that unclaimed agencies were treated with dignity.
The report also provided answers to families left in the dark about what happened to their loved ones. Tim Leggett learned last year from NBC News that his brother Dale, 71, a World War II history enthusiast, passed away alone in a Tarrant County hospital in May 2023. The Science Center, which shipped his body out of state, shipped it to a for-profit medical education company. He praised Parker’s efforts to ban practice.
“It’s right and wrong, whether we’re alive or dying, especially when it comes to how we treat each other,” Leggett said. Noticias Telemundo has released it. “This bill is another good step to make sure this doesn’t happen to other families.”
Leggett and almost 12 other families learned what happened to the relatives of reporters NBC News and Noticias Telemundo. Six of these families found relatives’ names on the list published by the news outlet.
Kimberly Patman, who was told by NBC News that the body of her ex-husband, Victor Honey, had been cut and leased, also said she welcomed the Parker bill.
“We are extremely grateful that they move forward so that what happened to Victor and the other individuals never happens again,” Patman said.
Honey, a homeless military veteran suffering from mental illness, passed away in Dallas in 2022 without informing his family. The Health Science Center then dissected his body and leased the parts to two medical companies and the Army. After learning of his death last spring, his family buried his cremated body at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. This experience rocked Patman with Honey’s adult child and siblings.
“Unless it’s happening to your family, you can’t fully grasp the impact,” Patman said.
Parker said his bill would prohibit donations from institutions not being charged to medical schools or private organization brokers unless they agree to a donation prior to death or permission is granted by a close relative. .
If adopted, this measure will hinder repeated actions by the Health Science Center.
Texas will also become one of the few states that explicitly ban research on unclaimed deaths. This practice is legal in most states, but increasingly unethical by anatomists and mentors who say that doctors and scientists should handle the deaths with the same respect that has been shown to live patients. is considered target.
Officials in Northern Texas have not been billed to unclaimed science and science centers by saving local government burial and cremation costs, assisting in training students and physicians, and supporting life-saving research. It justified sending the group. However, NBC News discovered that the offices of medical inspectors in Dallas and Tarrant County, as well as staff at the Health Science Center, did not contact reachable relatives before declaring unclaimed bodies. I did.
From “Treating the Dead”
Through thousands of pages of documents and data obtained in the request for public records, reporters determined that Dallas and Tarrant County have sent around 2,350 unclaimed organizations to the Health Science Center since 2019. In the USA” – selected for dissection and research. The center charged a medical device and training company for $649, a head of $649, a foot pair of $330 and a full body $1,400. Body Trade helped bring about $2.5 million a year to the center.
The deaths included military veterans, people suffering from drug addiction and mental illness, and young murder victims. Some people no longer contact their relatives, but their families say they love them and miss them, and to assert their bodies if they know they are dead They would have moved forward.
After NBC News shared its findings with the Health Science Center, the school expressed sadness to the family and acknowledged the issues that reporters revealed. “As a result of the information revealed through your inquiry, it has been revealed that there are failures in the management and supervision of the University of North Texas Health Science Center for willing physical programs,” the center stated last year. I mentioned it in.
Parker bills that could be subject to revision to pass Congress will next be discussed in the Texas Senate Committee. Parker’s office said it was working to get a companion bill submitted to the Texas home, hoping to win bipartisan support.
Eli Spe, a bioethicist at the University of Texas at Arlington, said Parker’s bill would mark a “groundbreaking change” that would protect bodies from misuse. When she first learned of practice more than three years ago, Spé began opposed to unclaimed physical use at the Health Science Center.
“Texas will essentially go from a state recently chosen for ethically offensive practices to be a model that others follow,” she said. “There are few states with such laws. We become real leaders of the country.”
