Texas medical program stops using unclaimed bodies following NBC News investigation

The Health Science Center also terminated its agreement with Dallas County, according to county Administrator Darryl Martin. He said the county had been planning to let the contract expire on Sept. 30 in light of NBC News’ findings.

County officials had justified providing these bodies to the center because they had been marked as unclaimed — meaning that the deceased did not have families willing or able to make funeral arrangements. The agreements had saved each county about $500,000 a year in burial and cremation costs.

But NBC News’ analysis of these cases found repeated failures by death investigators in Dallas and Tarrant counties — and by the center — to contact family members who were reachable before declaring a body unclaimed. Reporters identified 12 cases in which families learned weeks, months or years later that a relative had been provided to the medical school. Five of those families found out what happened from NBC News. The news angered and traumatized them.

Among those bodies was Victor Honey, an Army veteran who was mentally ill and homeless in Dallas. After his death in September 2022, his body was dissected and the parts were used by medical product and training companies and the Army. His family, including relatives who live in the Dallas area, knew nothing about it until NBC News informed them of what happened this spring. They have since claimed his cremated remains and had them buried at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. 

The Health Science Center’s move to explicitly ban the use of unclaimed bodies follows a torrent of changes triggered by NBC News’ reporting. 

On Friday, as the news outlet prepared to publish its investigation, the center announced it was temporarily suspending the Willed Body Program, firing the officials who led it and hiring a consulting firm to investigate the program’s operations. The center also permanently closed a laboratory, BioSkills of North Texas, where medical device makers paid tens of thousands of dollars for access to lab space and bodies.

Several entities that had unknowingly paid the center for unclaimed bodies also promised changes.

DePuy Synthes, a Johnson & Johnson company, told NBC News that it had paused its relationship with the Health Science Center after learning that it had received body parts of unclaimed people. Boston Scientific, whose company Relievant Medsystems used the torsos of more than two dozen unclaimed bodies, said it was reviewing its transactions with the center. The Army, which has received at least 21 unclaimed bodies from the Health Science Center since 2021, said it, too, was reviewing its reliance on the program.

And the Texas Funeral Service Commission, which regulates body donation programs in the state, issued a moratorium on out-of-state body shipments earlier this year while it investigates a range of issues, including the acquisition and distribution of unclaimed bodies by the center.

In her email to faculty and students on Monday, Trent-Adams, the Health Science Center president, described how the center’s Willed Body Program had in recent years veered away from the mission outlined when it was founded in the early 1980s: educating the center’s own medical students. 

The agreements several years ago to take control of unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties had led to a “substantial influx of bodies,” Trent-Adams said. That growth, she said, “exceeded management capabilities and led to significant oversight issues.” 

Moving forward, she said, the Willed Body Program will obtain human specimens only from consenting donors, with the goal of getting back to the program’s mission of educating future doctors and other health care providers. Trent-Adams said she would soon hold a town hall to answer questions and address the concerns of students and staff.

“We are refocusing our efforts on the original educational intent of the program,” she wrote, “and are working to make sure no unclaimed bodies are still being used in any of our programs.”