Report Finds Lax Oversight of UC Cadaver Programs

The state's five willed-body programs, which take in a total of about 870 cadavers each year, were generally run by employees who worked with little oversight and insufficient controls, the report showed.

The way cadavers and body parts were allocated and tracked varied widely depending on the campus.

Dr. Michael Drake, UC's vice president of health affairs, said in an interview that the universities have largely relied on the good intentions of employees rather than built-in safeguards to prevent wrongdoing.

"These systems, like many systems, were vulnerable to nefarious activities and unscrupulous activities," he said. "UCLA was [a] victim of that."

The inconsistencies among the UC campuses are part of the wide variation in how willed bodies are handled across the country, according to anatomists.

At many medical schools, professors have little to do with procuring bodies, preserving them and keeping records. Those jobs often go to nonacademic staff members who trained as morticians or worked their way up the ranks.

"You have a problem when somebody works alone in the dark with no oversight," said Ronn Wade, director of the Maryland State Anatomy Board.

At UCLA, the willed-body program has been shut since March, when authorities alleged that the director and an assistant had been stealing body parts and selling them for profit. Some parts were traced to biomedical companies.

After the scandal became public, the UC administration hired Navigant Consulting Inc. to help fix the system. The consultants' report was obtained by The Times through a Public Records Act request.

The report points to a need for more sophisticated locks on cadaver labs, better consent forms for donors and more freezer space for specimens -- changes that UC officials plan to make in the next year.

UC officials already have announced plans to use electronic implants to track cadavers and to create a post in the central administration to watch over the cadaver programs.

However, Drake said, campuses will not lose all autonomy.

For example, UC San Diego will continue to harvest brains -- which must be done soon after death -- before cadavers can be tested for infectious diseases.