Even in death, everyone deserves to be treated with the dignity and respect that befits a human being. That’s why Texans should be troubled by an investigation from NBC News that revealed that the University of North Texas Health Science Center used and in some cases sold unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties for research without notifying reachable family members.
After NBC News shared its findings, the science center suspended its Willed Body Program. Tarrant County commissioners on Tuesday voted unanimously to terminate a contract with the science center as soon as possible. And Dallas County’s contract has been suspended and will not be renewed, County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said in a statement.
Questions about how Texans’ remains are donated or handled for research and medical training have been swirling for years. This editorial page raised concerns about the lack of oversight over willed-body programs in 2023. Two years earlier, a bioethicist wrote in our pages about counties offering the cadavers of the poor to advance medical science without obtaining their consent before death. It shouldn’t have taken a major investigation by a national news network to get the attention of public and corporate officials.
The Texas Legislature should revisit the regulatory framework surrounding the use of bodies and consider a total ban when consent is not obtained before death or from next-of-kin.
There are many reasons a body can go unclaimed. Sometimes next-of-kin cannot be reached, or the deceased’s survivors may be unable to pay for burial or cremation.
Dallas and Tarrant counties had contracts in place to send unclaimed bodies to the UNT Health Science Center that the counties would otherwise have to bury or cremate at their own expense. The agreement was set up as a win-win solution for the counties and science center. But that is the wrong way to look at it.
Since 2019, about 2,350 unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties have gone to the science center, with more than 830 being chosen for dissection and study, according to NBC News.
The news network’s reporting indicates that death investigators repeatedly failed to contact reachable family members before designating a body as unclaimed. NBC News identified 12 cases in which family members didn’t learn of their loved one’s ultimate fate for weeks, months or years.
When relatives found out what had happened to their loved ones’ bodies, some were horrified and struggling to grieve. What they had to go through is deeply unfair.
Donating one’s body to medical science is a noble act. But it should always be a choice.
From now on, Dallas County will only provide unclaimed remains for medical research with the permission of the decedent or the person’s family, and the county will look for outside cremation services and develop a county-operated transport service, Jenkins said.
Now state policymakers and regulators need to do some soul-searching about what they have allowed to happen under their watch.
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