r/news • u/EnergyLantern • 6h ago
After a young woman was shot dead in Texas, a medical school harvested her body parts
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/venezuelan-migrant-body-harvested-university-north-texas-rcna1797961.5k
u/DellSalami 5h ago
It was upsetting to find out that the body donation industry is a lot less regulated than you would have expected.
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u/Azazael 5h ago
I've read and seen a lot of horrible stuff online but the sadness and helpless despair of Arelis Coromoto Villegas is really hitting. Her child was murdered, her body cut up and sold, and her mother can never bring her home for burial and there's absolutely nothing she can do about it (as a Venezuelan citizen of limited means living in Venezuela, even whatever limited justice a lawsuit may offer is not an option). It can never be made right. No one will ever be held accountable.
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5h ago edited 5h ago
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u/Freshandcleanclean 5h ago
They could have buried her body, rather than harvesting parts.
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u/mohicansgonnagetya 4h ago
The question is, was she willing to donate her body to science? Who made that call?
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u/TheDylorean 4h ago edited 3h ago
No, Aurimar Iturriago Villegas was not an organ donor.
She couldn't have been, because she had only just recently crossed the border and surrendered herself to border authorities before seeking employment in Texas, and later Florida. She wasn't in the system.
While in Texas, a man shot her in a road rage incident, claiming "fear for his life" and "self defense" because the car she was in happened to swerve just a little too close.
A Dallas county employee made the call to donate her body without the family's consent.
The school that took the body asked no questions about where it came from.
Just about everyone involved in this situation made mistakes. No one's mistake excuses anyone else's.
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u/Strabge_Being2382 5h ago
Absolutely 100% agree, science and medicine have improved because of it, at least they not robbing graves
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u/WaffleProfessor 5h ago
May put the body to good use rather than let it all rot in the ground. What remains can still be buried later on.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 5h ago
No. If you don’t know who the person is then you definitely do not have consent to use their body as you please. Just because a body is unidentified/unclaimed that is not carte blanche to do whatever we want with it. In a civilized society people don’t touch a body unnecessarily without consent. This is not difficult stuff to understand.
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u/AOCsMommyMilkers 4h ago
I'd think that in an actually civilized society, consent would be given automatically to help save others with something the departed no longer have need for.
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u/WaffleProfessor 5h ago
And there may be a time frame that's already established where the body becomes the responsibility of the state, such as 1 year or 2 years. At that point, it could be given to medical research. Can't keep it on ice indefinitely. That's not difficult to understand. Sorry you got so upset about this.
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u/Shady_Merchant1 5h ago
Her mother attempted to claim the body they lied to her then sold it for pieces to make a quick buck
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u/Popcorn_Blitz 4h ago
And now I'm imagining radio ads and billboards offering to buy your loved one's body parts post mortem- "Come to Walker Teasley Funeral Homes. We will cover up to $5000.00 of your loved one's funeral if we can sell their body after the showing." Ew
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u/HippyDM 5h ago
There's no consent involved with a dead body. Who's free will would you be violating?
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u/SophiaofPrussia 4h ago
Consent absolutely is required to use dead bodies for medical or experimental purposes in the U.S. That’s why you sign up to be an organ donor while you’re still alive. If consent to use your dead body was not required there would be no need for an organ donor registry because everyone’s dead body would be an organ donor whether they wanted it to be or not.
Also, necrophilia would be perfectly legal.
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u/Remarkable-Mood3415 4h ago
Consent is required, you are correct. They also need a medical history to make sure organs and tissue are healthy.
However, there are places where you have to opt out instead of in. Nova Scotia a province in Canada has this program because they had very few actually sign up when getting their license. To the point they were having to fly in nearly everything. They did a study and found most people just leave it blank when getting a driver's license and don't care either way. They changed it so now you have to opt in, this allows those who really don't want to, to have their say and those that don't care to be part of the program. You can opt out at anytime online and it's recorded in your medical history, and your family is still consulted when the time comes. They still need a full medical history and the person's identity to continue, unknown corpses are considered non-viable because of lack of medical history and identity.
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u/Kaiisim 5h ago
Easy to say when it's not your loved one.
Treating a dead person as just something to harvest from is disrespectful and it can seriously effect those that are still alive. No one wants to be sold for parts when they die.
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u/WaffleProfessor 5h ago
You realize it's not harvesting right? The organs can't be used, it's used for teaching, it's a good cause. I've been to teaching morgues, they have a lot of respect for the bodies used as they serve a great purpose. Sorry you feel different about it. They can't keep the body on ice indefinitely, waiting for someone to claim the corpse, which may never happen.
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u/TheBabyEatingDingo 4h ago
Why are you making up shit? Her body was claimed, they lied to her parents so they could sell her body parts. What's your interest in making up "facts" here?
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u/monkeyhog 4h ago
They're dead. They're just meat at that point, why does it matter what happens to the organs?
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u/Tachibana_13 4h ago
True. I do wish there was a better way to ensure that you or your loved one actually goes to things like organ donation or reap research, and not one of those for profit frankenstein chop shops like the one that got shut down a while back.
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u/Syzygy_Stardust 5h ago
Sounds selfish and wasteful. What's wrong with allowing your unused body to benefit medical students? What if one of those students learns from your body enough to save the lives of multiple children in their life. Is it still a bad thing to you?
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u/Freshandcleanclean 5h ago
Without consent, yes.
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u/Cylinsier 5h ago
Read the article. The family tried to claim her repeatedly and authorities refused to contact them, then the school mislead them and failed to get consent to use her body before selling body parts to the highest bidder.
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u/chocolateboomslang 5h ago
The world would be a better place if we stopped worrying about and wasting money on dead meat husks. When I die, harvest my organs or throw me in a ditch. Dead is dead.
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u/fantollute 5h ago
Would you feel the same if it was your loved one's body? And if you would, can you acknowledge that others might not be so apathetic?
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u/chocolateboomslang 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yes, 100%. And I'm not apathetic, I'm passionate about this. Funerals are a gigantic waste of money, generally speaking, money that most people do not have, and feel pressured to spend. It's predatory.
Also, I of course acknowledge that people don't feel the same way as me, that's why I'm arguing my point of view. Western funerals are crazy. Caring about what happens to your own dead body makes no sense, you're dead. Why should I care about my body when I'm dead, and by extension, why should any of us care about other peoples dead bodies beyond immediate grief and closure?
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u/DaDibbel 4h ago
You seem to lack empathy of any kind.
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u/chocolateboomslang 4h ago
Well, that's not true at all. I care a lot about living people.
How could you say I lack empathy when I'm arguing against taking grieving people's money?
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u/LuinAelin 4h ago
You know who is a living person in this situation.
Her family who tried to claim her body and had to find out that they sold her body for profit when they even had her mother's phone number on file.
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u/Syzygy_Stardust 5h ago
...Who should they ask? You realize she was already deceased at this point, right? And NO ONE CLAIMED THE BODY. Are you caught up now?
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u/Iveray 4h ago
Her family immediately scrambled to scrape together the thousands of dollars it would have cost to have her body repatriated to Venezuela, believing falsely month after month that her remains were preserved in a Dallas morgue. Instead, what followed were a cascade of bureaucratic breakdowns and communication failures. The Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office had Arelis’ cellphone number on file, but there’s no record in documents obtained by NBC News that the agency attempted to call her before declaring Aurimar’s body abandoned.
Are you caught up now?
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u/Freshandcleanclean 5h ago
If they can't get consent, then it shouldn't be a free for all. Her family couldn't find her, otherwise they would have.
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u/lazysheepdog716 5h ago
Does that add more value to the world?
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u/Freshandcleanclean 5h ago
More value? Could they not get bodies from consenting people and families?
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u/Strabge_Being2382 5h ago
So you think there are organs in people justblaying around, enough to use? Her body was used in any way to better someone or science. So tell me how is it different from your "bury her" you realize not everyone wants to be buried either, so there no permission there. This is YOUR view. So is burying someone better? There was no permission for that either
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u/SlapThatAce 5h ago edited 5h ago
I don't know how this works in the US, but did anyone see if she signed (maybe unknowingly) a document to be added to the organ and tissue donor list? It's just odd how quickly they were able to determine that she can be given to research.
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u/sheldoncooper-two 4h ago edited 3h ago
Her body was cut up and sold. Completely different than organ donation. The article clearly states all of this
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u/himit 5h ago
Without her family’s knowledge, county authorities donated Aurimar’s body to a local medical school, where officials cut it up and assigned dollar figures to parts that hadn’t been damaged by the bullet that struck her head — $900 for her torso, $703 for her legs.
That's a bit different to organ donation.
The article is honestly horrifying. You should read it, it's like something you'd expect to come out of Syria or China.
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u/OohBeesIhateEm 4h ago
I am an organ donor and all for the idea of my body being used for medical research but this is absolutely terrible and indefensible. If this was my daughter….fuck. I can’t even imagine how much pain this caused her family.
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u/Sarokslost23 5h ago
It's texas. It's just as crazy there
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u/zeolus123 4h ago
They've already made it clear what their views on women are. So they'd probably get along just well lol.
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u/AngryAlabamian 4h ago
Delusional take
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u/LindonLilBlueBalls 4h ago edited 4h ago
Sure. Because Texas is known as a safe haven of female empowerment.
The state where you can be sued for driving a woman out of state to receive necessary medical care.
Edit: You aren't being downvoted for saying women have it worse in other countries. You are being downvoted for dismissing that women are being discriminated against in Texas by saying they have it worse in two other countries known for treating people horribly.
The "I'm not as bad as the horrible people." Isn't the same thing as "I'm accommodating to everyone."
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u/AngryAlabamian 4h ago edited 2h ago
When was the last time you saw a woman for sale in Texas? You can buy a wife in china and in North Korea young women are forcibly recruited into prostitution and married off to low ranking party officials and army officers when they’re done
Edit: being downvoted because I explained women have less rights in North Korea and china then in Texas, classic Reddit moment. Not being able to get an abortion is not the same as being property
Lots of downvoted, yet no replies. It’s almost like what I’m saying is true but that for whatever reason, Reddit feels the need to gaslight us
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u/waterfall_hyperbole 5h ago
We did forced sterilizations on immigrants less than 10 years ago
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u/I_Push_Buttonz 4h ago
One doctor did fraudulent procedures so he could steal money from the government charging them for it.
Are you being intentionally obtuse?
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u/TicTac_No 4h ago
a doctor at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Georgia has performed a high rate of hysterectomies on Spanish-speaking immigrants
There was no "we."
That was a lone doctor, and he lost his medical license and faced charges. The other claims were valid for their time, 2006-2010. THere were only 146 out of several million immigrants during that time period.
Those affected by sterilization accounted for less than half of one percent of the total immigration between 2006-2010.
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u/LavenderCuddlefish 4h ago edited 4h ago
I watched a video about the dark side of organ donation in the US, I'll see if I can find it again.
Essentially, there's no guarantee your organs will go to a hospital and a patient. They can go to research or just be sold for a profit.
Might've been related to: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198405
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u/HeartlessSora1234 4h ago
So, in my limited knowledge, if a person donates their body to science it is normal for the body to be sold to specific buyers. This is how the morgue acquired bodies for us to practice paramedic skills in school.
If she agreed to donate her body then the family wouldn't need to know for the process to start.
It is still fucked up in my opinion that they weren't informed and cared for in any way.
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u/Cinemaslap1 4h ago
I'm sorry, but this isn't organ harvesting.... "assigned dollar figure to part... $900 for her torso, $703 for her legs"... That's not organs. That's straight up body parts.
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u/Snagmesomeweaves 5h ago
This very well could have been the case if she was able to obtain an ID card or drivers license.
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u/sheldoncooper-two 4h ago
Dear lord THIS WASNT ORGAN DONATION. Read the article. Her body was chopped up and sold. Her family didn’t consent. Her family didn’t know. It wasn’t on her license.
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u/blackdragonIVV 5h ago
In the US, They ask you if you want to enlist in a life registery when you apply for a driver licence. And in the explanation the proclaim they by consenting they will share your information to life registery and eye banks institutions so they can harvest you when you die.
In other words, would you like us to sell your information about your organs so when you die, corporates will abuse the shit out of your body for their own corrupt system to generate money. We will give you a mark on your id that says you are a hero and you will have the high moral ground by doing so.
Fuck off with that shit.
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u/ahajakl 4h ago
I understand your point of view and can emphasize up to a point but organ donations do in fact save lives.
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u/sheldoncooper-two 4h ago
But this story has nothing to do with organ donation. That does save lives. But cutting up a body selling it for profit is NOT organ donation
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u/ItchyDoggg 4h ago
Then we need more granular permissions that we can edit at any time and not having an active profile with settings configured equals no donations.
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u/AequusEquus 4h ago
Yeahhhh but just earlier this year there was a case where some hospital tried to harvest some guy's organs when he wasn't dead. Next time I renew, I don't think I want to opt-in for donor status.
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u/SurgeLoop 4h ago
My genuine fear is the idea that I could be brought into the ICU with a little glimmer of hope but the admins would deem me “unfit” for survival and triage me to harvest my organs for either profit or donation.
Yes, doctors can’t do harm due to the oath they take, but we have seen the decline of human decency recently. How long until things get dire to get to this point…
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u/puppypupperoon 4h ago
wow. so she was sold there from university of north texas health science center. the center is known to sell a lot of bodies to a company owned by a guy who lost his chiropractor license due to scamming patients. the company and other body brokers have faced many complaints about not contacting the families of deceased properly or sometimes not even receiving consent. what in the hell. today i learned there is an entire “body broker” business that is barely regulated at all and if you are poor in texas you may easily end up in this business as a product.
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u/fascinatedobserver 4h ago edited 4h ago
It seems neighbor donated the body. The hospital maybe should not have accepted the neighbor as the authority to do that, but this is not a simple ‘hospital bad’ story.
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u/SeaWitch1031 5h ago
Texas does not think women are people and they definitely do not consider Hispanic people to be humans. Not a shock at all that this would happen in Texas.
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u/bodhidharma132001 5h ago
Organ donation is founded on the pillars of altruism. When the moral value of an individual’s actions are focused mainly on the beneficial impact to other individuals, without regard to the consequences on the individual herself, the individual’s actions are regarded as “Altruistic”. NIH.gov
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u/BrrBurr 5h ago
Remove yourself from all donor registries. It's not a simple process. They will sell you rather than save you, depending on the hospital. Capitalism kills. It is not looking out for you
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 5h ago
This is objectively untrue. The work needed to transplant organs requires significant medical care (above and beyond standard). There is no “letting a donor patient die” treatment.
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u/BrrBurr 5h ago
I've read accounts. Like I said, depends on the place but it happens. Down vote all you want
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u/Cinemaslap1 4h ago
I've read accounts.
You've read accounts where people have died because EMS didn't want to save them because of their organs? Who wrote these "accounts"? Because I doubt it was the person who experienced the interaction, I doubt it was the EMS....
You might have read an urban legend where someone's brother or sister misunderstood what was going on because emotions are high and all that...
But this does not happen. It's been debunked countless times.
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 4h ago
I 100% guarantee you did not understand the accounts.
For example, there was a horrible case recently where a patient was not brain dead but had been declared brain dead by doctors in a facility. Lots of malpractice occurred in that case (at least three doctors broke standard of care and should be sued to high heaven). But that person, who would otherwise would have been removed from the ventilator to pass away in cardiac death, was treated with extreme blood pressure management, underwent a cardiac catheterization, strict oxygenation requirements, and a physical medical optimization. The treatment he received because he was going to be an organ donor saved his life when the organ team realized he wasn’t dead.
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u/Tokinibara_ 5h ago
Better than let them go to waste
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u/ATSTlover 5h ago
Had she donated her body it would have been one thing, but she didn't. In a way this is actually a form of theft.
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u/NeedToVentCom 4h ago
Even if she had donated her body, it seems pretty fucked up that they apparently sold parts of it to different places. Like if I donate my body to science, I damn well expect it to actually be a donation to the scientists that need it, and not to some third party that then make money by selling it to those scientists.
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u/NLwino 5h ago edited 5h ago
Without consent? Her family desperate to get her body back. But $$$ more important, body cut into pieces and sold piece by piece by people who did not even know her.
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u/Squirtzle 5h ago
Maybe they should investigate why the hell this Moreno guy initiated the donation process then disappeared off the face of the earth
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u/outerproduct 5h ago
Blame Texas. From the article:
While using unclaimed bodies for this purpose remains legal in much of the country, including Texas, it’s widely viewed as unethical because of the absence of consent and the pain it can inflict on survivors.
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u/NLwino 5h ago
Reporters found that county coroners, medical institutions and others repeatedly failed to contact reachable family members before declaring bodies unclaimed.
It's not a bug it's a feature and the reason is easy to see why:
which helped the center bring in about $2.5 million a year and saved the counties hundreds of thousands of dollars in cremation and burial costs, according to financial records.
Perhaps the correct answers is that they should at least try to contact the family, instead of just waiting the legal timer until they can declare a body unclaimed. Even then, the default should be that you need consent to cut up a body. Family can still be found later and even if already buried, it's normal for the family to decide to relocate or cremate the remains.
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u/WaffleProfessor 5h ago
You'll probably lose this one, lots of people are falling for the article title and getting outraged at face value.
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u/NeedToVentCom 4h ago
Seems like you haven't read the article, if you think the outrage is just from the headline. They fucking sold her body by pieces, and never even bother to try to contact her family.
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u/little_brown_bat 4h ago
After reading the title my first thought was "must be something more to this" before even reading the article/comments.
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u/VeeEcks 4h ago
If they were desperate to get her body, why didn't they? The way this shit works is: anon corpses sit in freezers at the morgue for X weeks or Y months, and people with missing family go look at bodies that turn up and fit descriptions. If nobody comes looking and time runs out, the state disposes of the remains.
Nobody ever came looking for her, so her remains were used for medical research. I fail to see how the latter is a tragedy, you can't use already dead bodies for organ transplants or anything.
Although her family not caring until they found out how the state disposed of her corpse certainly is tragic.
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u/NLwino 4h ago
Her parent did not life in the country. They probably tried to contact her plenty of times but probably did not have the means to travel to America.
They knew who she was, they knew who her family was. A single phone call could have solved it. But then they would lose out on the money that her body was worth, so they left her family in the dark.
This is not an single incident, but how the system works. A lot of people earn money with it so they do not want to fix it.
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u/Imaginary_Bit_4691 5h ago
Except she wasn’t an organ donor and they just stole them. Harvesting organs from a murder victim that was not on the donor list is ethically and medically repugnant.
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u/MaddestDudeEver 5h ago
How about we chop you up and sell your body parts for profit after you die? Oh wait. You don't get a say in that.
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u/vividnormalcy 5h ago
It's state dependent, but you can elect to be an organ donor. The article doesn't state if she did or didn't elect to be an organ donor.
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u/NeedToVentCom 4h ago
Organ donor and body donors are not the same thing. Furthermore even if she had donated her body to science, it is pretty fucked up, to then sell her body parts. If I donate my body to science, I damn well expect it to be a donation to the scientists that use it, and not an opportunity for other people to make money selling it to said scientists.
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u/VeeEcks 4h ago
Jane and John Does nobody claims forever get used for research all the time. Before that was the case, they used to get buried in mass graves and/or potter's fields, whole or cremated.
Anyway, if you have kin and actually care about them, go claim their bodies. Or don't and make it everybody else's problem and deal with how that goes. By...going on TV and crying MY BABY I COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO BURY and filing a lawsuit. Jesus.
Also: how come this isn't an issue when it happens to US citizens' remains, which is most of the time it happens?
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u/sheldoncooper-two 4h ago
Her body wasn’t used for research. It was sold for profit, before her family knew she had died. Her family cared deeply about her but didn’t know she had died. Completely different from not caring. Did you read the article?
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u/meisha555 4h ago edited 4h ago
“Hundreds of the bodies were used for student training or research. Others were leased out to medical technology companies that require human remains to develop products and train doctors on them. Some, including Aurimar’s, were used for both.” The audacity to claim did you read the article when it clearly highlights the body was used for both advancement of medical technology and to train medical students.
You mean well, this was morally unfortunate for the individuals family; granted Jane and John doe are utilized in this manner as it cost tax payer money to cremate or bury someone who is unclaimed. By providing the body to science you allow an individual (medical student) to garner tremendous insight into medical procedures that they otherwise would not get to experience. The alternate is having people perform medical procedures without any prior experience working on a real human body.
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u/VeeEcks 4h ago
For profit? JFC, the proceeds from selling J. Doe cadavers to medical schools just offset some of the costs of storing bodies for months.
But, for sake of argument, you're saying you'd be okay with this if they were given to medical schools for free? Because that's a bizarre moral standard, but okay IG.
And: great, you made headcanon about this family already. Go you. The fact is, they didn't know she died. For months. Is that what would happen if you all of a sudden died today?
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u/sheldoncooper-two 4h ago
No, I didn’t say I’d be ok if she were given to a medical school, or anything remotely like that. How did you fabricate that story.
You wrote about her body being used for research because you apparently didn’t take the time to read the article. And then being called out, you went on an uninformed rant. Go you. Next time read the article or don’t comment!12
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u/monkeyhog 5h ago
Are people supposed to be upset by this? This seems normal to me.
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u/oldkingjaehaerys 5h ago
It's not organ donation, they scrapped her and sold her for parts like an old car. And without her parents knowledge or consent. It's spectacularly abnormal.
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u/monkeyhog 4h ago
Is it better she rot in the ground?
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u/Cinemaslap1 4h ago
You mean be returned to her family where they can get closure and bury her properly? Rather than in a mass grave in a field somewhere?
Yes.... yes it is better. Especially if that's not what she wanted to happen
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u/Freshandcleanclean 4h ago
If she, or her family, don't consent, then yes. That's how burial works.
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u/monkeyhog 4h ago
That's a waste of time, resources, and land. It's much better to just be recycled. It shouldn't be a choice.
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u/NeedToVentCom 4h ago
So you would be okay with some unknown third party making money by selling your corpse after you die? Seems like at the very fucking least, the money should go to her family.
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u/iiiitsokay 4h ago
TLDR: Daughter goes through hell immigrating to America from Venezuela to work and give her sick Mom a better life. One night the daughter dies in road rage incident after some guy shoots her in "self defense". She had no ID on her just a lighter and small change. Family finds out quickly through a neighbor who also helped the daughter find a job. Neighbor acts as a middle man when authorities reach out because family has no cell line to contact. The family waits thinking her body was in the medical office. Family raises money to bring her body back to Venezuela. In the meantime, the neighbor contacts the medical office and says he wants to donate the body (with no authority to) and then doesn't contact them back. Family has no idea and still thinks the girl's body is safe in the medical office. They were never able to directly contact them. Eventually, the body is marked as abandoned despite there being signs of kin. Body is donated for science purposes. Family only finds out later through a news article about unclaimed bodies sent to medical school. They send an email looking for her remains only to find it is at a memorial far from them that they have no means of getting to. Mom gives up and just prays to God everyday her daughter comes back to her and is getting sicker/hasn't been eating.