Six people were charged on June 14, 2023, with buying and selling human remains stolen from the Harvard Medical School morgue and from an Arkansas mortuary. The macabre story made national headlines, particularly the indictment of Cedric Lodge: a morgue manager at Harvard from 1995 until earlier this year.
As a scholar in the sociology of religion, my research explores practices related to whole-body donation in medical schools across the United States. While these accusations against Lodge are deeply troubling, they are an aberration: Medical school communities go to incredible lengths to respect and honor the people who donate their bodies to science.
