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Harvard Body Parts Case Exposes Gap in Federal Law
When Harvard University Medical School settled a lawsuit over the illegal sale and distribution of body parts by the manager of its anatomical gift program, it ended one of the more unusual criminal and civil cases in recent years. But besides costing Harvard $53 million and sending several participants in the scheme to jail, the case had one other strange twist: The people arrested in the federal case were not charged with selling body parts. Instead, they were charged variously with trafficking in stolen goods across state lines and other offenses. That is because there is no U.S. law making the sale of human remains a federal crime.
Significant regulatory gaps
“There is actually very little federal law regarding the dead,” wrote Wake Forest University Professor of Law Tanya D. Marsh, an expert in funeral and cemetery law. “The most significant is the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule, which requires funeral homes to provide certain disclosures to consumers.”
This gap has led to a thriving market for human skulls and other body parts that, contrary to what one might believe, does not hide in the shadows. Facebook pages, websites, and brick-and-mortar stores are spread out across the country, selling their collections and buying other specimens. It’s all “perfectly legal,” according to The Bone Room, one of the online sellers of human remains.
The lack of federal law regarding the sale of human remains may surprise some, but there are reasons for the confusion, according to The Bone Room. For many years, a major source of human bones was India, which eventually stopped exporting remains in 1987.
“Many U.S. news sources phrased it as a ban on the sale of human bones rather than as a ban on exportation from one particular country with no effect on United States laws,” The Bone Room says on its website.
Importers began relying on China for supply, but that country ended the market in 2008, and no other country “has yet stepped up and material is much more scarce than it once was,” The Bone Room states.
Whenever a legitimate market closes, however, a questionable one opens. The Harvard case was an example. Cedric Lodge, at the time the manager of the Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program, removed body parts from the morgue at Harvard Medical School and sometimes brought them to his home in New Hampshire, where his wife, Denise Lodge, would assist in selling the stolen parts to several others. Occasionally, some of the participants would come to the morgue to choose what they were willing to buy. The Lodges dealt with brokers in several U.S. states who then sold skin, brains, heads, and bones to collectors throughout the country. The Lodges were both sentenced to prison on interstate trafficking charges.
The details of their criminal behavior were surprisingly simple, yet graphic. Deals for parts were often made and finalized by electronic messaging and payment systems. The indictment alleged that in 2019, one broker transferred $1,000 to Denise Lodge with a memo that read, “head number 7,” and in 2020 that same broker sent $200 along with a memo that read, “braiiiiiiins.”
Several states ban sales
There are several states where the sale of human remains is illegal, Marsh said–Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Following the Harvard case, which included a former mortuary services provider in Arkansas, legislation was introduced in that state to ban the practice as well.
One specific practice is illegal under federal law: Trafficking in remains of Native Americans is illegal under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. In addition, nearly every state outlaws grave robbing.
Marsh said that tracking how body parts end up being offered for sale is difficult because the remains have been “de-identified.”
“In other words, the seller does not name the deceased person whose remains are being sold and usually does not reveal how the remains were obtained–and there is no law requiring them to do so,” Marsh wrote.
Proposed legislation would regulate donated remains
There are some federal efforts to clamp down on what is a loosely watched industry. The Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act, a bipartisan measure introduced in 2025, would create “standards for registration, inspection, chain of cu
stody, labeling and packing, and proper disposition” of human remains donated for medical research and educational purposes, a press release about the bill states.
“Families who choose to donate a loved one’s body for scientific research or educational use do so believing that they are benefiting others and that their loved ones will be treated with dignity and respect,” said Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, D-TX. “Sadly, many families have been taken advantage of by a largely unregulated industry.”
The bill does not contain criminal penalties for violating the act, and while the bill calls for the registration of entities that acquire and sell bodies and body parts for profit, the measure makes exceptions for other individuals and groups, including funeral directors, organ procurement organizations and medical schools.
The measure specifically exempts “schools of medicine, dentistry, and mortuary science and research, training organizations and other entities that do not sell for profit a whole body or body part.”
Presumably, that would include institutions such as Harvard Medical School.
Any effort to explicitly criminalize the illicit market in body parts, however, may not be on the horizon, Sam Redman, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts, told Courthouse News Service.
“There’s no interest group representing the dead,” Redman said.
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