Is Harvard responsible for the alleged sale of body parts from its medical school morgue?
Trust in Harvard University's anatomical gift program is being examined by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. (Photo by Kris Snibbe/Harvard University)
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
When a family member donates their loved one's remains to a hospital, medical school, or research program, they consider an array of possible outcomes. The bodies will be examined, dismantled as necessary for donation or scientific purposes, possibly save current or future lives, and contribute meaningfully to societal understanding of anatomy and disease.
Being stripped for parts and sold are not generally on that list.
But it is still unclear if the behavior of a Harvard morgue manager who allegedly ran a multi-state human remains scheme – 'ghoulish' in the words of a Supreme Judicial Court justice considering the case – means that the Ivy League school is also on the hook.
Federal prosecutors indicted Cedric Lodge for allegedly stealing, marketing, and selling body parts from corpses donated to Harvard. According to federal officials and civil suits brought by relatives of people who donated their bodies to the medical school, Lodge allowed unauthorized people into the morgue to view bodies that had fulfilled their educational use but had not yet been sent for their final disposition.
He allegedly stole body parts including skin and organs from those corpses, bringing them out to his car – featuring the vanity plate 'Grim-R' – and distributing the remains nationwide.
Lodge's wife, Denise Lodge, pleaded guilty to transporting stolen goods in February 2024 for her part in the enterprise.
The state's high court is considering whether Harvard itself bears any responsibility, after a Suffolk County Superior Court judge last year dismissed an array of civil lawsuits because he determined Harvard is immune from being sued for the actions of its employee in this case.
Though the families were 'understandably horrified that their loved ones may have been abused and desecrated,' Superior Court Judge Kenneth Salinger wrote in his decision last year, the suits did not prove that Harvard failed to act in good faith in receiving or handling the donated bodies or that they are legally responsible for Lodge's actions.
Salinger's ruling was based on the fact that institutions that accept donor bodies are covered by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which includes a provision that says an institution cannot be liable in a lawsuit if they act in 'good faith' to abide by the gift law. But at the heart of the case is a major point of agreement: people should be able to entrust family members' remains to institutions doing vital life saving, medical training, and research work. Without that trust, the whole system falls apart.
'It would discourage donations if there is no institutional accountability for anything that may happen, any desecration of the body prior to its disposition,' Jeffrey Catalano, attorney for the family members, told the high court.
Justice Scott Kafker admitted that dynamic did 'gnaw' at him. 'It does seem problematic, at the end of the day, that the institution that got the body and benefited from it and furthered science is not responsible for the actions of its manager,' Kafker said during oral arguments on Monday morning.
Martin Murphy, representing Harvard as well as employees Mark Cicchetti and Tracey Fay who ran the medical school's anatomical gift program, agreed that the trust was essential but argued that even if the university and its managers were negligent in overseeing the morgue, that is not enough to overcome immunity protections.
Lawmakers 'intended not only to encourage the giving of anatomical gifts, but they intended to clear the way for institutions to receive anatomical gifts,' Murphy said.
The state Supreme Judicial Court accepted the case on appeal, and will determine within 130 days whether it should be sent back for trial. One question before them is whether good faith immunity applies to all aspects of an anatomical gift program, including what happens to bodies after they are no longer needed, or whether it only applies to the 'transactional aspects' of making the anatomical gift.
In this case, the families' appeal defines transactional as the process of making, amending, or refusing to make an anatomical gift. It would not include the period after the donations are made.
The act does not consider 'situations where remains are dismembered and trafficked while in the donee's custody,' the families' suit argues.
Justices seemed ambivalent about this argument. Since the statute makes some reference to whether bodies may be embalmed, cremated, or otherwise disposed of at a family's request, the justices said it probably includes the time in between donation and disposal.
The families' lawyer said the law is actually vague or silent on that front, while Harvard's lawyer said the law clearly covers everything from start to finish in the process.
Justices also toyed with a core question of liability in oral arguments: What does it mean for an institution to be responsible for its employee's actions, and when does an employee actually represent the institution?
'Whose bad faith is necessary in order for it to be attributable to the institution?' Catalano asked before the court. 'Is it the president of Harvard? Is it the Board of Trustees? Every institution is run by people, and every court that's looked at the bad or good faith in the institution looks to the people to determine if the institution … was or was not guilty of good or bad faith.'
The families' suit relies only on conclusory gestures, Murphy argued, to claim that Harvard should have known about the trafficking ring. Lodge posted a picture of himself in an undertaker costume, but only on his wife's Facebook page. The record does not include details on when visitors came and went from the morgue, or when bags were being taken out of the building, he said.
But the families were not allowed discovery to produce additional facts that would support their charge of bad faith, Catalano said, since the case was dismissed.
Acknowledging the appalling treatment of the bodies in this case, Harvard and other institutions nonetheless argue that the families' interpretation of the anatomical gift act would essentially gut it.
In a brief supporting the lower court dismissal, Cornell University's medical school said the 'broad good-faith immunity provision is essential to ensuring the continued availability of anatomical donations for use in medical education, training, research, and other applications.'
With very few national court decisions on the subject, the Cornell brief warns that an SJC decision in favor of the families 'would send shockwaves through organ procurement
organizations and body-donation programs nationwide, with potentially catastrophic impacts on those entities' ability to educate the next generation of doctors and promote scientific research and innovation.'
In 2023, an independent panel conducted a review of Harvard's anatomical gift program. The panel found that Harvard did not have a policy related to the gift program or to the care and use of human specimens donated or acquired for education and research. 'The development of a policy that reflects the values of Harvard University is strongly recommended,' the review concluded.
The donation consent form could also benefit from tweaks, the review suggested, including more specificity on how remains should be tracked, handled, and disposed. The last communication on the donor resource page, from December 2023, announced a new task force to review the panel's recommendations and to develop an implementation plan.
'We take our responsibility for oversight of the Anatomical Gift Program seriously,' wrote Harvard University Provost Alan Garber (now president) and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine George Daley at the time. 'We owe it to our anatomical donors and to you, their loved ones, to ensure that Harvard is worthy of those who, through selfless generosity, have chosen to advance medical education and research. An anatomical donation is among the most altruistic acts and deserves our attention and profound respect.'
Closure will likely remain elusive for those still hoping to find out if their family member's faces, heads, brains, and skin were trafficked across the county.
Federal officials will continue to attempt to identify victims, according to the Harvard investigation page. Unfortunately, it said, officials have 'indicated that positive identifications are not likely possible given the nature of the alleged crime.'
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