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Biological Resource Center: 'Human Chop Shop' In Arizona

kamalktk

Antediluvian
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
Messages
7,168
There's a lot of WTF in there. A whole lot.

https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/fbi-shines-light-on-now-shut-down-human-chop-shop-in-phoenix
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Former FBI Assistant Special Agent Mark Cwynar's testimony says he observed buckets of head, arms and legs inside the building off 24th street and University Drive.

Cwynar also said he saw a cooler filled with male genitalia, body parts piled on top of each other with no apparent identification to indicate what bodies they came from, even a torso "with the head removed and replaced with a similar head sewn together in a Frankenstein manner."

The Federal Bureau of Investigations raided the Phoenix based body-donor facility in 2014, after allegations that the company was selling parts of those donated bodies for profit.
 
This is true, it's not a hoax.
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This is true, it's not a hoax.

This is one of the grisly stories associated with the FBI investigation and raid on the Biological Resource Center body brokering business (Arizona; 2013(?)).

Tribble posted about the more recent lawsuit a week ago.

The story about the corpses being sold for use in Army experiments is true, and it's not new. Check out this December 2016 Reuters news item for more details:

How the body of an Arizona great-grandmother ended up as part of a U.S. Army blast test
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodybrokers-industry/
 
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I guess it surprises me most that a dead body for that purpose warrants 6000 dollars. Aren't there enough John Doe's around?
 
I guess it surprises me most that a dead body for that purpose warrants 6000 dollars. Aren't there enough John Doe's around?

Unidentified and / or unclaimed corpses aren't presumed to be property that can be sold off by default - at least not in the USA. As far as I know, such corpses are due the equivalent of a pauper's burial in all 50 states.

AFAIK it requires a documented wish or extant contractual arrangement on the part of the deceased (or perhaps a party legally authorized to act on the deceased's behalf) to execute a donation for research purposes.
 
I haven't (yet) browsed any of those links but a horrid memory stirs of the rumour/urban-myth? that one of the motor manufacturers, probably V-W*, had a constant demand for donated human corpses. Their posthumous fate was to be jammed into mini-buses and crashed at speed to test safety features. The urban-myth version was that an employee left the company in disgust because the suppliers were fobbing them off with stale cadavers which did not perform like living bodies.

Maybe it's what someone's Auntie would have wanted! :oops:

*For some reason, that seems the most likely firm in an unlikely tale!
 
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I would have thought that SynDavers would be more repeatable, if more expensive. You’d also avoid any negative publicity from pearl-clutchers.

maximus otter
 
I would have thought that SynDavers would be more repeatable, if more expensive. You’d also avoid any negative publicity from pearl-clutchers. ...

An artificial dummy is useful for evaluating abstract factors affecting the whole body or specific areas (e.g., whether the head will snap forward enough to hit the windshield), but it cannot demonstrate what effects the abstract forces will have on actual biological materials (i.e., flesh and bone).

It's analogous to testing bullet effects. Firing bullets into gel blocks will provide a lot of data regarding possible physical effects from penetration, but internal physiological shock effects can't be reasonably assessed until bullets are fired into carcasses.

This is why cadaver testing continues to this day. It's not as unavoidable or common as it once was, but we'll probably never eliminate it entirely.
 
...it cannot demonstrate what effects the abstract forces will have on actual biological materials (i.e., flesh and bone).

That’s exactly what SynDavers are intended to do, and one of the reasons why they’re so expensive. The materials used are exactly analogous to human tissues; the joints reflect human joint ranges of flexure, etc.

maximus otter
 
That’s exactly what SynDavers are intended to do, and one of the reasons why they’re so expensive. The materials used are exactly analogous to human tissues; the joints reflect human joint ranges of flexure, etc.

They're still no substitute for the "real thing" when it comes to evaluating damage to actual tissue and bone.
 
The civil trial (filed by families of donated deceased folk) is now underway ...
Trial opens in lawsuit over ‘Frankenstein’ use of remains

A retired FBI agent described a horrific raid of now-closed body donation facility Monday, recalling a table stacked with severed human legs, heads stuffed in a cooler, and torsos without heads and limbs.

Mark Cwynar testified on the opening day of a civil trial that one torso had its head removed and a smaller head sewn on, comparing the discovery to a character from Frankenstein.

The relatives of 23 people whose remains were donated to the Biological Resource Center contend in a lawsuit that the facility mishandled their deceased loved ones and misled them about how the remains would be used. The lawsuit alleges the facility committed fraud by claiming the donated bodies would be used for medical research, when in at least two cases it knew the human remains would be sold for use in destructive military testing.

The lawsuit also alleges that donor families who were promised the cremated remains of relatives received boxes with what they thought were their loved ones, but later discovered the bodies were sold to third parties or were still at the facility.

They are seeking unspecified damages. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.apnews.com/a628601c4a4d49e18969f548f183fbd4
 
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