Cedric Lodge, 55, who was fired from his job on May 6, and the
other defendants were accused of carrying out a black market
body parts scheme from roughly 2018 to 2022, the U.S. Attorney's
Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said in a
statement. One of the defendants lives in Scranton,
Pennsylvania.
Prosecutors said Lodge, who was hired by Harvard in Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1995, would at times let potential buyers into
the school's morgue to examine cadavers and select what parts to
buy. The buyers mostly resold the body parts, prosecutors said.
A sixth person was previously charged in Arkansas in the same
investigation on suspicion of stealing body parts from a
mortuary she worked for, prosecutors said. Reuters has
previously reported on abuses in the body trade business.
It was not immediately clear if Lodge, who was arrested by the
FBI on Wednesday according to ABC News citing the FBI, or the
others indicted, who included Lodge's wife, had legal
representation. The FBI did not immediately respond to requests
for comment.
"Some crimes defy understanding," U.S. Attorney Gerard Karam
said in a statement. "The theft and trafficking of human remains
strikes at the very essence of what makes us human."
People whose body parts were sold had volunteered their remains
to be used to educate medical professionals, Karam said.
The Harvard Medical School cooperated with the investigation, he
said.
George Daley, the dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine, said
in a statement to the school's community on Wednesday that "we
are appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen
on our campus."
Daley said Harvard Medical School, which first learned of the
allegations in March, was searching its records, particularly
logs showing when donor remains were sent to be cremated and
when Lodge was on campus, to try to determine which donors' body
parts may have been trafficked.
Harvard's office of media relations said it could not provide
more information, citing the criminal investigation.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Donna
Bryson and Grant McCool)
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