New York, Jun. 15, (dpa/GNA) – US prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged six people, including the former manager of Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) morgue, with trafficking in stolen human remains.
According to Pennsylvania prosecutors, the six charged individuals and a woman previously indicted in Arkansas, were part of a “nationwide network” which “bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary.”
United States Attorney Gerard Karam said the indictment alleges that that from 2018 through 2022, the manager of the morgue for the Anatomical Gifts Program at Harvard Medical School, named as 55-year-old Cedric Lodge, stole parts of cadavers donated for medical research and education before their scheduled cremations.
Logde and his wife, also named in the indictment, then sold the remains. According to prosecutors, Lodge on occasion allowed two of the other individuals charged to enter Harvard Medical School to “examine cadavers to choose what to purchase.”
Similarly Candace Chapman Scott, who was previously indicted in the Eastern District of Arkansas, also stole parts of cadavers she was supposed to have cremated from her employer, a mortuary and crematorium in Arkansas’ capital Little Rock, according to prosecutors.
“Some crimes defy understanding,” said Karam. “The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human.
“It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing. For them and their families to be taken advantage of in the name of profit is appalling.”
In a message posted on Harvard Medican School’s website, deans George Daley and Edward Hundert called the alleged activities by the school’s former employee “morally reprehensible” and “disturbing.”
The deans said that Lodge was fired in May, and cited investigators as saying that he acted without the knowledge or cooperation of anyone else at Harvard.
The message went on to say that the university “appointed an external panel of experts to evaluate our Anatomical Gift Program and morgue policies and practices.”
GNA