Somehow, I think that a headline like this – Head of UCLA Cadaver Program Is Arrested – makes opening paragraphs like this:
LOS ANGELES – The man who oversees the cadaver program at the University of California, Los Angeles, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of grand theft, but authorities would not say what he is accused of stealing.
…just a tad disingenious, no? Especially when the authorities later note that they were searching the suspect’s home and a nearby shed. Unless they thought that the guy was hiding the physical cash gathered from his illicit dealings… for that matter, is there a black market these days for cadaver pieces, and if so, do I really want to know why?
Excellent point. When I saw the headline, I presumed the guy was stealing bodies or parts of bodies. I guess I should have read the story.
Keith
The gold in gold inlays might be worth something. Its not all that pure, but at around $400 per ounce, I am sure you can collect enough over a few years to pay for a nice car. If you want to get some other ideas, maybe look at some old movies about the loot the Nazis plundered from the folks sent to the concentration camps. I remember seeing piles of glasses and boxes of teeth. And a lot of other things that keep you up a night.
I understand there is a market in recycled pacemakers. Not in the US, where they are all traced by serial numbers. A new pacemaker can cost several thousand dollars.
If it wasn’t teeth or pacemakers, I really don’t want to know what he was harvesting. And I wonder if funeral homes get in trouble for this as well. I know that pacemakers must be removed before cremation (lithium cell batteries tend to explode in fires).
Well, that’s cleared up then:
“The man in charge of the cadaver research program at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been arrested on suspicion of grand theft as part of an investigation into whether university employees sold donated bodies or body parts to medical researchers for profit.”
I guess that puts to a premature death the sylent-green-is-people sort of speculation.
And the arms-smuggler sort of speculation, too.