Thursday, June 15, 2023

Harvard morgue manager charged with selling stolen body parts


2023/06/14
Harvard University in Boston

New York (AFP) - The morgue manager at America's prestigious Harvard Medical School allegedly took dead body parts from his workplace without permission and then sold them, US prosecutors said Wednesday.

Cedric Lodge, 55, has been charged with trafficking in stolen human remains, the US attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

"Some crimes defy understanding," said the attorney, Gerard Karam.

"It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing," he added.

Lodge has been charged alongside his wife, 63-year-old Denise Lodge, and five other alleged co-conspirators with involvement in a "nationwide network" of bought and sold human remains.

Prosecutors say that from 2018 to 2022 Cedric Lodge "stole organs and other parts of cadavers donated for medical research and education before their scheduled cremations."

He is accused of taking the remains from the Harvard site in Boston to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he and his wife sold the remains to two of the other accused -- Katrina Maclean and Joshua Taylor.

At times, Lodge "allowed Maclean and Taylor to enter the morgue... and examine cadavers to choose what to purchase," the attorney's office said.

Prosecutors say Maclean, 44, of Salem, Massachusetts, and Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pennsylvania then resold the remains for profit.

The indictment alleges that Maclean shipped human skin to Taylor to have him "tan the skin to create leather," the Boston Globe reported.

Lodge managed the morgue for Harvard's anatomical gifts program. He was fired from his post on May 6, the school said in a statement.

"We are appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus," George Daley, the dean of Harvard University's medicine faculty, and Edward Hundert, dean of medical education, said in a joint statement.

Another co-accused allegedly stole remains from a morgue in Arkansas where she worked, including the corpses of two stillborn babies who were due to be cremated and returned to their families.

Two other people charged allegedly bought and sold remains from each other, exchanging more than $100,000 in online payments.

© Agence France-Presse



Title The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03
Contents Familiar studies of men and books -- The body-snatcher.




 by William Andrews

Andrews, William, 1848-1908

Title The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc.

Contents Barber-surgeons / William Andrews -- Touching for the king's evil / William Andrews -- Visiting patients -- Assaying meat and drink / William Andrews -- The gold-headed cane / Tom Robinson -- Magic and medicine / Cuming Walters -- Chaucer's doctor of physic / W.H. Thompson -- The doctors Shakespeare knew / A.H. Wall -- Dickens' doctors / Thomas Frost -- Famous literary doctors / Cuming Walters -- The "Doctor" in time of pestilence / William E.A. Axon -- Mountebanks and medicine / Thomas Frost -- The strange story of the fight with the small-pox / Thomas Frost -- Burkers and body-snatchers / Thomas Frost -- Reminiscences of the cholera / Thomas Frost -- Some old doctors / Mrs. G. Linnæus Banks -- The lee penny -- How our fathers were physicked / J.A. Langford -- Medical folk-lore / John Nicholson -- Of physicians and their fees, with some personal reminiscences /
Andrew James Symington.

A Parody on "Mary's Ghost;" or, The Doctors and Body-snatchers. by Thomas Hood

Anonymous
Author Hood, Thomas, 1799-1845
Title A Parody on "Mary's Ghost;" or, The Doctors and Body-snatchers.
A Pathetic Tale, With Numerous Additions.
Original Publication United Kingdom: Christopher Berry (printer),1825.
Note The names of Norwich localities and medical men have been substituted for those in the original poem, including Henry Carter who died in 1830. --the Wellcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pjw2f57k


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