UK: A grand jury indicted five people on Wednesday over claims they stole and sold body parts from cadavers donated to the school, according to federal prosecutors. Among them was the former mortuary manager at Harvard Medical School.
According to a statement from the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Cedric Lodge, 55, who lost his job on May 6, and the other defendants were charged with operating a black market body parts scheme from roughly 2018 to 2022. The Pennsylvania city of Scranton is home to one of the defendants.
Authorities claimed that Lodge, who started working for Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1995, occasionally permitted prospective buyers into the university's mortuary to examine cadavers and choose which parts to purchase. Prosecutors claimed that the buyers primarily sold the body parts again.
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According to prosecutors, a sixth person was previously accused of stealing body parts from a mortuary she worked for in Arkansas during the same investigation. Abuses in the body trade industry have previously been covered by Reuters.
It was unclear right away whether Lodge, who was detained on Wednesday by the FBI, as reported by ABC News citing the FBI, or the others charged, which also included Lodge's wife, had legal counsel. Requests for comment from the FBI did not immediately receive a response.
US Attorney Gerard Karam stated in a statement that "some crimes defy comprehension." "Theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human."
According to Karam, people whose body parts were sold volunteered to have their remains used to instruct medical professionals. He claimed that the Harvard Medical School assisted the investigation.
In a statement released to the school's community on Wednesday, George Daley, dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine, said, "We are appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus."
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In order to identify which donors' body parts may have been trafficked, Daley claimed that Harvard Medical School, which first learned of the allegations in March, was searching its records, particularly logs showing when donor remains were sent to be cremated and when Lodge was on campus.
The media relations office at Harvard stated that it was unable to provide more details due to the criminal investigation.