Bodies Given to Texas Medical School Without Consent

For years, Dallas and Tarrant counties have been sending their unclaimed dead to the University of North Texas Health Science Center. The center used these bodies for medical research. They would cremate those with infectious diseases or ones that had started to decompose. The rest were either embalmed or frozen. Over 830 bodies out of about 2,350 since 2019 were picked for training future doctors and nurses. Others were cut into pieces and rented out to medical schools and companies.

This practice was meant to save money on burial costs and provide useful specimens for medicine. But after a news investigation found that some North Texas families weren't told what happened to their missing relatives, the Health Science Center stopped using these bodies. They also fired officials who led this program and apologized to affected families. More people have come forward since then, saying their relatives were given without consent. These survivors are sad and upset to learn that their loved ones might have been studied or even cut up and rented out. To help families find answers, the news team is publishing names of over 1,800 people whose bodies were used by the center since 2019. This list comes from records requested from county medical examiners.

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