The use of unclaimed bodies for medical study is examined in the series Dealing the Dead, which includes this article.
Some were aware that their loved one had passed away, but they were unaware of what had happened to the body. Others looked for years before learning that their loved ones had passed away alone, without any family members present. Almost everyone stated that if they had known, they would have given funerals to the deceased.
According to NBC News’s year-long investigation, these mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters were incensed to discover weeks, months, or even years later that their loved ones’ bodies had been donated to a Texas medical school for analysis and dissection. Medical students were tasked with handling some of the preservative-injected bodies. some had their arms, legs, skull bones, and torsos leased to the military and for-profit businesses, while some had been frozen and dismembered. This treatment had not been approved by anyone.
Six of these families discovered their relative’s name on a list of unclaimed dead that the news outlets released in October, and almost a dozen of these families were given the gruesome and graphic truth by NBC News and Noticias Telemundo instead of a medical examiner, hospital, or police officer.
Abigail Willson, whose mother passed away at a hospice in Fort Worth last year before being transferred to the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth without her consent, said, “We didn’t know she was dead or what happened to her.” Everywhere in Texas, we have looked. We wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t released that list of names.
Watch “Hallie Jackson NOW” on NBC News NOW tonight at 5 p.m. ET for additional information on this story.
In its Lost Rites series, NBC News disclosed last year that coroners and medical examiners nationwide have frequently neglected to inform families of their loved ones’ passing before interring them in paupers’ graves. Reporters followed the probe to North Texas, where officials had arrived to treat the unclaimed dead as a free resource rather than an expensive burden. Over 830 of the 2,350 unclaimed bodies that Dallas and Tarrant counties have delivered to the Health Science Center since 2019 have been chosen for dissection and analysis.
The center helped generate roughly $2.5 million annually by promoting these human specimens as being of the best quality available anywhere in the United States. The price of heads was $649. $330 was made from a pair of feet. The cost is $1,400 for the entire body.
Following an investigation by NBC News, the center discontinued its body donation program, dismissed its leaders, and declared it would no longer use unclaimed dead. The Health Science Center has expressed sympathy to families impacted by what it described as management, care, and professionalism errors in statements to reporters.
Families are still grieving for their departed loved ones after learning via NBC News that their relatives were being examined without their permission. Blue-collar workers and veterans of the armed forces were among the deceased. both men and women who battled mental illness and drug addiction. a fan of World War II history. A young person who was murdered.
Some of their stories are as follows.
Denzil Dale Leggett
Dale Leggett had a dry sense of humor and a friendly manner, which were well-known when he let someone near to him. He liked talking about Marvel comics and the history of World War II. According to his family, he was also very private and shunned most social events.
For forty years, he operated a forklift at the same Fort Worth warehouse, doing little more than going to work every day. Although they rarely saw him more than once or twice a year, his two siblings cherished him.
When Leggett passed away in a Fort Worth hospital in May 2023 at the age of 71 from respiratory failure, neither of them was notified. Tim Leggett, his younger brother, was taken aback when he saw his sibling’s name on the NBCNews.com list.
He stated it was terrible and horrible to find out that way. He has been trying to piece together what transpired in the months since.
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