Rush, Bilirakis Introduce Bill to Regulate Body Donation for Medical Research and Education as Grisly Abuses of Donor Bodies Abound

Press Release

Today, U.S. Representatives Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) and Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.) announced the introduction of legislation that would, for the first time on the federal level, regulate the donation of bodies and body parts for medical research or education. The Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act of 2021 (H.R. 4062) would create a registration and tracking system for bodies and body parts donated for research, thus preventing body brokers and bad actors from taking advantage of donors and donor families.

When a family donates a loved ones' organs or tissues for transplantation, the process is transparent and heavily regulated. However, in comparison, there is currently no federal law -- and few state laws -- governing the process when a body is donated for use in medical research or education. Under current law, almost anyone, regardless of expertise, can dissect and sell human body parts, and there is no system for registering and tracking bodies and body parts that are donated or sold. Because of this, grisly abuses of donor bodies abound.

"In light of the grotesque abuses of bodies donated to advance medical research, it is beyond clear that measures to ensure accountability and transparency in this process are much-needed on a federal level," said Rep. Rush. "Individuals and families who make the selfless decision to advance scientific research must be certain that their remains, or the remains of their loved ones, will be treated with the utmost dignity and respect. We cannot continue to allow unscrupulous bad actors to profit off grief-stricken family members and degrade the dignity of donor bodies. I thank my colleague, Rep. Bilirakis, for joining me in introducing this important and long overdue legislation."

"This important legislation provides safeguards to ensure that human remains are disposed of in a manner that preserves the dignity and choices of the patient or next of kin," said Rep. Bilirakis. "The industry has been largely unregulated and sadly many families have been exploited for profit. Our bill gives family members the peace of mind of knowing that their wishes are being honored."

Currently, bodies and body parts ostensibly donated for medical research can be bought, sold, and leased again and again, making it extremely difficult without proper reporting requirements to consistently track what becomes of donors' bodies, to ensure that they are handled with dignity, and to guarantee their return to their loved ones after cremation. Brokers make money -- anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 -- by providing bodies and dissected parts to companies and institutions that specialize in advancing medicine and other trades through training, education, and research.

The Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act of 2021 would transform the landscape of tissue and whole-body donation by preventing body brokers from taking advantage of the generosity of donors and donor families by directing anyone who acquires or transfers a human body or human body part for education, research, or the advancement of medical, dental, or mortuary science to register with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, maintain a complete record for each case, ensure proper label and packaging of the remains, and dispose of them by returning them to a donor's relative or personal representative.

Following are a few examples of the treatment donor bodies have been subjected to due to the lack of regulation of the process, as reported by Reuters:

In 2016, more than 20 bodies donated to an Arizona broker were used in U.S. Army blast experiments -- without the consent of the deceased or next of kin. Some donors or their families had explicitly noted an objection to military experiments on consent forms.
In Honolulu, police were called twice to storage facilities leased by body broker Bryan Avery in 2011 and 2012. Both times, they found decomposing human remains, but both times, police concluded that Avery committed no crimes because no state law applied.
Health inspectors who visited Southern Nevada Donor Services, which offered grieving families free cremation in exchange for donating a loved one's body to "advance medical studies," found a man in medical scrubs holding a garden hose, thawing a frozen human torso in the midday sun. As the man sprayed the remains, "bits of tissue and blood were washed into the gutters."
Lesley Witter, the Senior Vice President of Advocacy at the National Funeral Directors Association, said: "Representative Rush has always been a strong advocate for American families, and this important legislation is another example of his efforts to protect American families at a time when they are grieving. NFDA members are proud to support and work with Rep. Rush and Rep. Bilirakis on this important legislation."

Hillary Adair, a funeral director from Williams, Arizona, said: "The heinous acts committed by body brokers have deeply impacted the families I serve in my home state of Arizona. The anguish body brokers have caused must be stopped. I am so pleased that Reps. Bobby L. Rush and Gus Bilirakis have introduced the CDRI Act to bring long-overdue accountability and transparency to the whole-body donation process and give donor families peace of mind."

The Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act of 2021 is supported by the National Funeral Directors Association, the world's leading and largest funeral service association, serving more than 20,000 individual members who represent nearly 11,000 funeral homes in the United States and 49 countries around the world.

The full text of the bill is available HERE.

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