The unregulated body parts industry is booming—with heads going for $2K

A nationwide network of stolen body parts allegedly involving a Harvard Medical School morgue manager has revealed a thriving and macabre market for human remains, experts told The Post.

Federal prosecutors allege Cedric Lodge, 55, stole body parts including heads and brains that were donated for research at Harvard Medical School and intended for eventual cremation.

Lodge, who previously managed Harvard’s Anatomical Gift Program, and his wife, Denise allegedly sold them online to buyers from 2018 through last August.

Federal prosecutors said the “egregious” sprawling conspiracy also involved an Arkansas mortuary employee who sold body parts on Facebook for nearly $11,000 and a Massachusetts store owner who bought a human skull to create a “killer clown”-style doll she later shared on Instagram.

A body donated for science — be it to a university or other research facility — is often only used for particular parts; what remains may then be sold by a body-broker to sell to other facilities, collectors or, really, anyone.

Organ and tissue donations are “heavily regulated” by the federal government, but that oversight isn’t extended to whole bodies.

One Virginia funeral home director said he’s not surprised something like the Harvard incident could happen, given the lack of accountability in the whole-body donation process — and he’s calling for federal supervision.

“It’s intensely unfortunate because there’s so much federal regulation regarding what universities and hospitals can do to procure donations,” said Jon Milton, who runs Laurel Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Spotsylvania County. “They rely on what’s considered the body-broker industry, which typically facilitates through hospices and funeral homes.”

Just four states — New York, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida — closely monitor whole-body donations and sales, Milton said.

“In Virginia, there’s only one legal, authorized donation service, but over 80% of anatomical donations leave the state — and there’s no licensing requirements regarding facilities or people who begin a body brokerage at all,” Milton said. “So you have a lot of people who can just operate without any oversight, and that’s where we get into circumstances … like at Harvard.”

Family members of the deceased are typically approached by hospices or funeral homes who work with unregulated body brokerages, Milton said.

In exchange for donation, Milton said, many clients receive a free cremation. Those most vulnerable to the practice often can’t afford the cost of a funeral, which costs an average of $7,848, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

“So these persons are the ones who are being asked to sign their loved ones’ entire body to them, and that’s where the body brokerage begins to take inventory from that body,” Milton said.

A body broker can sell a donated corpse for roughly $5,000, although prices sometimes exceed $10,000. Body parts can also be resold several times by non-tissue transplant banks that often target poor or elderly clients, NFDA officials said.

Human heads command as much $3,000 in a market driven primarily by medical schools, research facilities, independent collectors and cosmetic surgery firms. A spine can sell for $1,200, while a set of hands can fetch about $1,000, depending on condition.

An entire body can sell for up to $11,000, Milton said.

“And I when I say head, I don’t mean skull,” he clarified. “So, you still have the tissue, the brain, the face.”

The alleged scheme tied to Harvard Medical School’s body-donation program highlights the ongoing commercialization of donors, according to the American Association for Anatomy.

“The gravity of abhorrent donor misuse is amplified by the potential ramifications that unethical practices may have on the advancement of anatomical research and education,” AAA officials said. “Individuals who violate donor and public trust should be held accountable under the law.”

A Harvard Medical School spokesman declined to comment, citing the criminal case and pending litigation against the school. University officials described the accusations as an “abhorrent betrayal” in a June 14 email to students.

Additional criminal charges linked to the purported body parts trafficking ring would not come as a shock, a Florida university professor told The Post.

“It was not surprising,” said Thomas Champney, who teaches cell biology and anatomy at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. “We know things like this happen at schools and many schools then kind of clean up their act and get better oversight. I was surprised Harvard didn’t have better oversight.”

Body brokers typically sell to surgical-training programs to teach the next generation of medical professionals how to install pacemakers, do knee transplants or other procedures.

“You’re training surgeons, you’re educating people, you’re doing something valuable,” he said. “Where I have concerns is that in the middle there, you have people making money … off these individuals’ altruistic donations.”

At Harvard, the allegations appear to be “even more nefarious,” Champney said.

“And that is, individuals who want to gain human tissues for uses that really aren’t appropriate,” he said. “For instance, they were selling skin to get it tanned into leather so they could make human skin-leather products. That’s just not appropriate.”

Katrina Maclean, 44, owns Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody, Massachusetts, where she sold and stored human remains, federal prosecutors allege. The Salem woman is accused of buying a human skull to create a doll and allegedly agreed to buy “two dissected faces” for $600 from Lodge in late 2020, court documents show.

“There really are no laws or regulations, and that’s why these body-broker programs can do what they do,” Champney said. “And then there are people who truly break the law, like the guy at Harvard.”

Milton, Champney and NFDA officials want Congress to pass the Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act, which was introduced by lawmakers in September. If enacted, it would track and regulate body brokers by requiring them to register with the Department of Health and Human Services.

“While there are regulations that govern how the body of an individual may be donated, once a body is donated for research or medical training, there is little federal or state regulation over what happens to it,” NFDA officials told The Post in a statement. “Few rules mean few consequences when bodies are mistreated and exacerbates trauma experienced by grieving families.”

Candace Chapman Scott, an Arkansas mortuary worker indicted last month in the multistate scheme, pleaded not guilty in May to selling body parts she stole from medical school cadavers and selling them through Facebook for $11,000, NPR reported.

Todd Olson, a retired anatomy professor who previously taught at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, said the allegations involving Lodge and the underground online network were wholly unsurprising.

“It’s predictable that this has happened, and it will almost certainly happen again,” Olson told The Post Tuesday. “The basic problem is human greed, and that the human body as used in medical education and research is almost always acquired by donation. And is there a more perfect capitalistic commodity than the one we get for free — and that there’s almost no oversight of its transaction for money?”

With Post wires