Cadavers

A former mortuary worker convicted of carving up and selling cadavers donated to UCLA's medical school was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in fines, restitution and unpaid taxes. Jurors had found Ernest Nelson, 51, guilty after a trial that detailed how he and Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's Willed Body Program, conspired to sell body parts from donated cadavers to enrich themselves. "This is one of those cases so outrageous it doesn't come along very often," Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe said.

Dr. Adam Ostrzenski, a semi-retired gynecologist from Florida, made headlines this week when he published a story in the Journal of Sexual Medicine declaring that he had located the elusive G spot -- the fabled key to enhancing a woman's orgasm. In an almost unbelievable article detailing Ostrzenski's discovery by L.A. Times reporter Melissa Healy, we learn that the doctor found what he believes to be physical evidence of the G spot by conducting a postmortem examination of an 83-year-old woman in Warsaw Medical University's Department of Forensic Medicine.

Helen Yoshikawa walked into the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles armed with four pages of talking points. Kathy Pahlow came loaded with questions. They knew they'd already lost their case, but this was their one chance to address UCLA's lawyers ? to explain that their dead parents were more than body parts and their failed lawsuit about more than money. "I wanted to have the satisfaction," Yoshikawa said, "of looking them in the eye and telling them who we were. I know some people would say it's a lost cause, but it didn't feel that way to me. " Pahlow and Yoshikawa were among dozens of family members who sued UCLA after a scandal erupted over its body donation program.

A federal judge has blocked the government from requiring tobacco companies to begin placing images of diseased lungs and cadavers on cigarette packages, saying the health warnings violated the firms' 1st Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, in a 29-page ruling Monday, granted the preliminary injunction because he believed there was a "substantial likelihood" the cigarette companies ultimately would win "on the merits of their position that these mandatory graphic images unconstitutionally compel speech.

University of California medical schools would be required to implant barcodes or radio-frequency identifiers in cadavers, university officials said Wednesday as they announced a plan aimed at ending repeated scandals involving bodies donated to science. With reforms in place, officials said, they plan to ask a judge in March to reopen the body donor program at UCLA medical school, a year after it was temporarily closed.

Rather than go to trial, the University of California and a contractor have agreed to pay $630,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that UC Irvine illicitly sold a spine from a donated cadaver and lost the rest of the remains. The case, which was scheduled for trial next week, would have been the first to go before a jury in the well-publicized failure of UCI's Willed Body Program in the late 1990s.

The former head of UCLA's cadaver program and a businessman were indicted Friday on eight felony counts involving black market sales of donated human body parts in a scheme that allegedly cheated the university out of more than $1 million. Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's willed body program, allegedly sold body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson, who then resold them to medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies. "As a result, Ernest Nelson was able to supply over 20 of his clients with hundreds of body parts and received over $1 million for the supplied body parts," according to the indictment.

A state board voted to prohibit an exhibit of human cadavers at a Tampa museum, but museum officials said they intended to go ahead with it. The exhibit of 20 preserved human bodies and 260 organs obtained in China is scheduled to open today at the Museum of Science and Industry. The Chinese government said the bodies were unclaimed and their identities were unknown. The Florida Anatomical Board voted 4 to 2 at a meeting to deny approval for the exhibit.

A former director of UCLA's program for bodies donated to research pleaded guilty Friday to his role in a scheme to traffic body parts for profit, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. Henry Reid, 58, admitted to conspiring to steal body parts worth more than a million dollars from 1999 to 2004 and handing them over to "body broker" Ernest Nelson, who in turn sold the parts to medical and pharmaceutical research companies. Reid and Nelson were indicted by a grand jury in May.

One of the alleged participants in a cadaver-trafficking scheme at UCLA's medical school has agreed to plead guilty to filing a false federal tax return and admitted to concealing $54,400 in income. The plea agreement announced by authorities Tuesday resolves the federal tax case against Henry Reid, an embalmer from Anaheim who directed UCLA's "willed-body" program from 1997 to 2004. But Reid still faces state criminal charges of conspiracy and grand theft.

Only months after wrapping up a 16-year major league career, Robin Ventura could barely walk without a cane. So intense was the discomfort in his right ankle, mangled in a slide earlier and deadened with painkillers thereafter, that the former All-Star third baseman found he lingered in bed a little longer each morning, unwilling to step into the day. "I didn't go places for a long time," Ventura volunteers, "because I didn't feel like getting...

We enter the gross anatomy lab at 8 a.m. and spend the next two-and-a-half hours palpating bodies, cutting through skin and subcutaneous fat, probing muscle layers and searching for nerves and blood vessels. Before our first day, our anatomy professor spoke briefly about the special — and privileged — experience that lay ahead. "You will remember where you were standing," she said. "You will remember the first cut. " That cut was not our first interaction with the cadavers.

Helen Yoshikawa walked into the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles armed with four pages of talking points. Kathy Pahlow came loaded with questions. They knew they'd already lost their case, but this was their one chance to address UCLA's lawyers ? to explain that their dead parents were more than body parts and their failed lawsuit about more than money. "I wanted to have the satisfaction," Yoshikawa said, "of looking them in the eye and telling them who we were. I know some people would say it's a lost cause, but it didn't feel that way to me. " Pahlow and Yoshikawa were among dozens of family members who sued UCLA after a scandal erupted over its body donation program.

This may be the 88th year that Angelenos have enjoyed the Los Angeles County Fair, but it may be the first year one can eat a ton of deep-fried novelties, work it off dancing to live music and finally see how that whole process happens in a display of real human cadavers. Adding a lot of science and a little bit of sideshow freakiness to the festival atmosphere, the exhibit "Our Bodies: The Universe Within" is making its first, non-museum debut at the fair this year. Opening Saturday and running until Oct. 3, the L.A. event is the biggest county fair in the nation, with an average attendance of 1.3 million people for each of the last five years.

An experimental synthetic cornea implanted in 10 patients may be a potential alternative to cadaver corneas for curing vision loss due to corneal inflammation and scarring, researchers said Wednesday. Eye surgeons currently use primarily cadaver corneas for transplants, but that requires the use of anti-rejection drugs and presents a risk of infection. Plastic corneas can also be used, but they present other problems and are generally tried only when tissue transplants have failed.

The first time I saw a dead body I was groping around in the dark in 125 feet of water looking for a drowning victim. A few members of my diving club had volunteered to help the grieving family find her: Collectively, we had enough brashness coupled with the insouciance of ignorance to go looking for this poor soul after the sheriff's divers said it was too dangerous at that depth. That's testosterone at work for you. We fanned out across the muddy bottom, holding onto a guide rope.

An alleged middleman in the sale of body parts from corpses donated to UCLA medical school said Sunday night that he cut up about 800 cadavers with the full knowledge of UCLA officials and then sold them to "giant" medical research companies over a six-year period. An attorney for UCLA, Louis Marlin, offered a very different account of the case. He said that the middleman, Ernest V.

A doctor pleaded guilty to stealing a hand from a cadaver at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark. The hand was later found by police at the home of a stripper. Under a plea agreement, Ahmed Rashed, 26, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree theft, said Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Judson Hamlin. Hamlin said he would recommend probation at a sentencing hearing March 1. Rashed is currently in his third year of residency at Martin Luther King Jr.

A former mortuary worker convicted of carving up and selling cadavers donated to UCLA's medical school was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in fines, restitution and unpaid taxes. Jurors had found Ernest Nelson, 51, guilty after a trial that detailed how he and Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's Willed Body Program, conspired to sell body parts from donated cadavers to enrich themselves. "This is one of those cases so outrageous it doesn't come along very often," Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe said.

A businessman accused of selling human body parts donated to UCLA's medical school in a scandal that tarnished the reputation of the university's willed-body program was found guilty Thursday of conspiring to commit grand theft, embezzlement and tax evasion . Los Angeles County prosecutors said Ernest V. Nelson, 51, cut up heads, torsos and other parts from donated corpses and sold them without UCLA's permission to medical and pharmaceutical research companies, collecting $1.