this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
138 points (96.0% liked)

News

23259 readers
4174 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Drusas@fedia.io 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Isn't this the sort of thing that can happen when you check the box saying you're willing to be an organ donor?

[–] JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

No iirc donating your body to science and organ donation are completely different.

And it doesn't sound like he donated his body to science, if he did there would almost definitely be a paper trail because it is a hell of a hassle.

[–] DamienGramatacus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's probably more like a clause in their military contracts

[–] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

No.

Militaries aren't in the habit of selling the dead. They are in the business of making the dead. This is more the wheel house of greedy doctors.

[–] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes. And the "survivors" don't have a say in that if the person itself said otherwise before dying.

Training future doctors is a good cause and will most likely save lives in a similar fashion to donating a heart after all.

Edit: I removed a wrong part here claiming that the article is clickbait. I was off by a mile, see the reply to this post as to why.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

In no way is this clickbait. It's a truly ugly thing that was done to these people.

None of these people volunteered their bodies to science.

The college made a deal with 2 Texas counties to take homeless peoples bodies, "try" to find their relatives, and if they couldnt, then sell their bodies to companies, hospitals and the US army. The college made $2 million+ selling these peoples bodies without consent, to the point where they were expanding their cadavers storage facilities.

Can you see the issue with an organization that is responsible for finding the loved ones of these dead people, but is paid millions of dollars if they don't? Turns out, after filing a foia request, the reporters were able to find dozens of these homeless people families, sometimes within minutes of trying. Many times there were active missing persons reports, or in one case the next of kin lived in the same city and had the same name as his deceased father. In one case, the family found out about their deceased father after he was already sold. To get him back, they were made to sign a waver allowing the donations. They sold the body again, and did not return it for 1.5 years. When they did, his ashes came in a box with a generic thank you letter and a bill of $56 for shipping.

On publishing their results, the multimillion dollar corpse factory shut itself down and fired its directors. The two Texas counties working with them are opening investigations. When the reporters contacted the companies and the army about the bodies, they all confirmed that they thought the bodies came from intentional and purposeful donations. None of them knew the actual source.

[–] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago

Hm I was clearly wrong, I apologize! The excuse is that I was really tired and already quite "clickbait state of mind" ish.

Thank you for taking the time to write this! ♥