The Dark Reality of America's Body Broker Industry
Buying and selling human bodies is not some small, hidden operation in the United States. It represents a massive, mostly unregulated industry. This business exists in the troubling space between medical advancement, corporate profit, and personal grief. Multiple investigations reveal it has deeply traumatized families. These families were often misled about what truly happened to their loved ones after death.
When Donation Becomes a Commercial Enterprise
Known as body brokering, this practice involves for-profit companies acquiring donated corpses. They dismember these bodies and sell them whole or in parts. The buyers include research institutions, training programs, testing facilities, and sometimes military experimenters. While body donation itself is common and often altruistic, critics argue body brokering exploits legal loopholes. It takes advantage of emotional vulnerability during grief. This turns human remains into commercial inventory with little meaningful oversight.
According to reports, this industry is now valued at approximately $1 billion, or around £800 million. It continues to grow steadily.
Families Shattered by the System
For Farrah Fasold, the system failed in the most brutal way possible. Her father, Harold Dillard, died from terminal cancer in late 2009. She believed she was honoring his final wishes by donating his body to medical science. Instead, she later discovered a horrifying truth. His remains had been dismembered. Authorities found his arm stuffed in a barrel alongside other body parts. Farrah also learned she had been sent sand instead of her father's actual ashes. Weeks later, her father's head was found among body parts at a medical incinerator.
"I developed insomnia, I had a really hard time sleeping," Fasold said. "Anytime I closed my eyes, I would instantly see visions of the big red medical waste tubs that they had found all the body parts in." She added, "What they did with my dad's body is not what he signed up for. There was no justification, no justice."
Her painful experience is not an isolated case.
Kim Erick was told her son, Chris Todd Erick, died by suicide in 2012. Years later, she said she recognized what she believed was his skinned body. It was displayed as The Thinker at a Real Bodies exhibition in Las Vegas. "As Chris's mother, I recognize everything about him," she stated.
A Legal Divide: US vs. UK and Europe
In the United Kingdom, the for-profit trade of human body parts is strictly banned under the Human Tissue Act. Similar laws apply across much of Europe. The United States system operates very differently.
The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act does prohibit the sale of human tissue. However, it allows companies to charge a "reasonable amount" for processing, storage, and transport. This legal loophole has enabled a sprawling commercial market to flourish.
Researcher and author Jenny Kleeman investigated this trade for her book The Price of Life. She described the industry as "murky" in an interview. "In the UK, you can donate your body to medical research, but nobody's allowed to donate your body for you," she explained. "The people who administer the whole process, they don't make a profit out of it. Whereas in America, you are allowed to make a profit out of providing these dead bodies [without clear permission]."
She further noted, "Because there's no regulation saying that you can't make money this way, it has allowed for an industry to emerge where people can provide bodies when they have no background in scientific research."
Putting a Price on Every Part
Internal documents reveal how bodies are systematically broken down and sold piece by piece. Firms often call themselves "non-transplant tissue banks." According to these records, a whole body can fetch up to £10,000. Individual parts carry separate price tags:
- Torso: £2,360
- Liver: £450
- Head: £370
- Foot: £260
- Lower leg: £260
- Spine: £220
- Artery: £48
- Fingernail: £5 (around £25 per hand)
At one firm, a public school janitor's liver sold for £450. A bank manager's torso was sold to a research institute for more than £2,600. These bodies and parts are supplied to universities, medical schools, surgical training programs, and medical-device companies. They are also used in some US military research projects.
A Billion-Dollar Trade Operating Openly
In 2017, an investigation uncovered at least 25 for-profit body-brokering companies operating across the US. One firm alone earned £9.3 million over just three years. Kleeman found that one of the largest brokers shipped body parts to more than 50 countries, including the UK.
Despite the enormous scale of this business, oversight remains minimal and ineffective.
One notorious company, the Phoenix-based Biological Resource Center (BRC), became the subject of an FBI investigation. Authorities discovered warehouses containing dismembered bodies stored in plastic tubs. A police detective wrote in an affidavit, "All of the bodies appeared to have been dismembered by a coarse cutting instrument, such as a chainsaw." Inside one related warehouse, officials found 127 body parts belonging to 45 different people.
Bio Care owner Paul Montano faced fraud charges, but prosecutors later dropped the case. They stated they could not prove deception under the existing, weak laws.
The Critical Issue of Consent
Consent lies at the very heart of this ongoing controversy. Families are typically asked to sign lengthy, complex forms. These documents contain dozens of clauses outlining potential uses of the body. Critics argue these forms are extremely difficult to understand, especially during periods of intense grief and loss.
In December 2016, more than 20 donated bodies were secretly used in US Army blast experiments. The remains were shredded by shrapnel. Families said they had never agreed to military use. However, the broker's defense team pointed to a single, buried clause in the contract permitting use by the United States Army. According to reports, the bodies were blown into hundreds of pieces.
Inside the Mind of a Body Broker
Jenny Kleeman interviewed numerous figures in the body-brokering industry during her research. She said one of her most revealing conversations was with Garland Shreves, the CEO of Research for Life. "He says he's doing it out of respect for the world of science and feels that other body brokers have given the industry a bad name," she reported.
But Shreves also admitted he could never promise families they would receive the correct ashes of their loved ones. He acknowledged that once bodies are sold and distributed, all control is lost.
Why This Flawed System Persists
Despite the repeated scandals, medical institutions continue to rely heavily on donated bodies. Brandi Schmitt, director of the anatomical donation programme at the University of California, revealed the university received 1,600 whole-body donations in 2024. Another 50,000 living donors are registered.
"In medical schools all over this country, when students study anatomy, they use cadavers," Kleeman said. "It's how people learn about the human body, and it's how surgeons learn to operate." She added, "I don't think there is anybody who would want someone opening their body up for surgery who has never practised before."
Doctors, engineers, and researchers genuinely depend on human bodies to train and innovate. Families who cannot afford traditional funerals may see donation as a meaningful, cost-free alternative. But the current American body-broker system frequently leaves donors' relatives completely unaware. They do not know how the remains are used, divided, shipped across the country, or ultimately destroyed. This lack of transparency and accountability defines a billion-dollar industry operating in the shadows of medicine and morality.
