For five years, the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth received unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties for medical research purposes. Over 830 bodies out of 2,350 since 2019 were embalmed or placed in freezers, some used to train future medical professionals while others were dissected and leased out to various institutions. This practice, legal in most of the U.S., was seen as economically beneficial and vital for medical advancements. However, after an investigation revealed that families of missing relatives were not informed about the use of their loved ones’ bodies for research, the Health Science Center stopped the practice, fired officials, and apologized to affected families. Nine more families came forward with similar stories, causing distress and heartbreak among survivors. To help these families find closure, NBC News published a database of over 1,800 names of people whose bodies were donated to the Health Science Center by the counties, obtained through open records requests. This has brought attention to the importance of transparency and consent in the use of unclaimed bodies for research purposes, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines and communication with families in these situations.
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1,800 unclaimed bodies sent to a Texas medical school, with thousands more still unaccounted for
