An Arizona man spoke about the pain he endured when he discovered that his mother’s cadaver—which he donated to a medical research center—was sold to the military and blown up in a ‘blast testing’ experiment.
When Doris Stauffer died in hospice care after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, despite the doctors saying she didn’t carry the gene for the disease.
Medical officials feared the condition may have mutated and hoped to study Doris’s brain after her death to further investigate.
But when Doris died in 2014, her neurologist was unable to accept her remains so her son, Jim, reached out to a number of donation facilities who he hoped would continue the study.
Finally, Jim settled on the Biological Resource Center (BRC) in Maricopa County after a recommendation from a nurse, under the agreement that the company—led by Stephen Gore —would send her brain to a neurological research group.
“I feel foolish,” Jim Stauffer told FOX6 when he learned the fate of his mother’s remains. “Because I’m not a trusting person, but in this situation, you have no idea this is going on your trust.”
“I think that trust is what they fed on.”
Jim recalled how an official from BRC came to pick up his mother’s cadaver within 45 minutes of her death. Then he signed an agreement with the official in which it was detailed what ‘would and would not happen to Doris’ body.
A few days later, Jim received a wooden box that contained the majority of his mother’s ashes, Jim said. However, no information was provided about how Doris’s body was used or where the rest of her remains were.
Another three years would pass before Jim learned the truth that happened to his mother’s remains when a reporter from Reuters sent him a series of documents.
The documents showed that BRC workers detached one of Doris Stauffer’s hands for cremation and sent those ashes back to Jim. The company then sold and shipped the rest of Doris’ body – including her brain – to a taxpayer-funded research ‘blast testing’ project for the U.S. military.
According to the record, Doris’s cadaver was strapped into a chair on ‘some sort of apparatus’ and an explosive device was detonated beneath her.
The documents revealed that the idea of the experiment was to ‘get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED’.
“There was actually wording on this paperwork about performing this stuff,” Jim said. “Performing these medical tests that may involve explosions, and we said no. We checked the “no” box on all that.”
BRC and military records show that at least 20 other bodies were also used in the blast testings without permission and notifying the donors or their relatives.
The donated cadavers were all sold to the military for $5,893 each.
The project officials have said that they never received the consent forms from the donors or their families along with the bodies. Instead, they were forced to rely on the assurances of BRC that the families or donors had all agreed to be used in the specified type of research.
Jim says he still struggles with the reality of the graphic end his mother’s body met, adding that his memories of her are regularly plagued by visions of the experiment.
“I don’t see a pathway of ever getting past this,” Jim said. “Every time there’s a memory, every time there’s a photograph you look at there’s this ugly thing that happened just right there staring right at you.”
Jim is one of 33 complainants that filed a lawsuit against BRC and its owner Stephen Gore.
In 2015, Gore was found guilty of operating an illegal business after it was discovered that he had been off selling body parts.
According to Reuters, more than 1,755 human body parts were found at the facility, which took 142 body bags to move and weighed 10 tons.
Reports said that the BRC picked up the bodies of deceased loved ones from family homes, and from there they sold the parts to middlemen for profit.
There was even a price list for body parts, which included a whole upper torso for $4,000, an intact torso for $2,900, a spine for $1,900, a leg from mid-femur to toe tip for $600, a head for $500, and a knee for $375, reports said.
A full, intact body could cost anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000.
After the investigations, Gore pleaded guilty in October 2015 to federal charges of conducting an illegal enterprise. He was sentenced to one year deferred jail time, four years probation and was forced to pay $121,000 in restitution.