A group of medical students at the Keck School of Medicine sent a letter to its dean, Carolyn Meltzer, demanding that USC’s anatomical donation program make donors aware their bodies could be used for military training with the U.S. Navy and Israeli military.
The letter was signed by 72 students, residents and attending physicians at Keck. In addition to their call for Keck to publicly disclose all consenting documents for donors, the students also asked for an open forum where they could discuss their concerns with the school’s administration.
The letter comes after an Annenberg Media report revealed that the U.S. Navy paid USC more than $1 million for at least 89 bodies since 2018. Of that number, 32 were used for Israeli military training at the Los Angeles General Medical Center.
A Keck medical student spoke with Annenberg Media on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation. The student said people often donate their bodies with the expectation of it being used for medical education and innovation, as opposed to military trauma training.
“We went to the consent information and all the documents and wanted to see what they were told,” the student said. “We realized there wasn’t clarity [of] any sort.”
In a statement to Annenberg Media, Keck wrote that it participates in the program with the Israeli military as an “educational program, not a military program.” The school also said it was in direct communication with students behind the letter.
“At the Keck School of Medicine, our mission is to advance the highest standards of medical education and care for all people,” the statement read. “And in the divided world we live in, it is even more important for us to carry out that mission irrespective of political ideology, social status, or creed.”
The medical students who spoke with Annenberg Media said they received a response from the dean Wednesday.
Though bodies can be used for programs that involve the U.S. Navy and Israeli military, the dean wrote in the letter, USC participates in these programs in an educational capacity, not a military one.
The program brings in doctors from the Israeli military to train at L.A. General. A 2020 study that analyzed the program from 2016-2018 said prospective doctors must go through trauma simulation scenarios including thoracic gunshot and explosion wounds.
Members of the Israeli military operate on a “perfused human cadaver” — a recently deceased body that has a red paint and saltwater mixture pumped through it to imitate bloodflow, according to the study.
Thomas Champney, an anatomy professor at the University of Miami and member of the Federative International Committee for Ethics and Medical Humanities, said donors should have the explicit ability to consent to where their body goes.
“I believe that donors should be as fully informed as possible about how they might be utilized in the lab,” Champney said. “We want to honor their wishes in the ways that they think are appropriate.”
A second medical student who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of backlash said the dean’s response felt like a way to shut down, rather than open communication between medical students and the Keck administration — something the letter explicitly outlined.
“It didn’t feel like a response at all to me. It felt like a statement of fact from someone who may not have cared to read our letter thoroughly,” the second student said.
The second student also said that while they don’t see the problem as black-and-white, they struggled to resolve the conflict between the ethics they were taught and the school’s practices.
“It’s hard. I accept that institutions are bigger than the individuals who work within them,” the student said, “but I have a lot of secondhand grief knowing that I pay money that goes to a school that can spend money on what I believe is improving a genocide.”
All three medical students said they saw a difference between what they were taught in their medical ethics classes at USC and the contracts revealed in Annenberg Media reporting.
“We’re taught to honor and appreciate the gift,” the first student said. “We would hope that gift would go back to the community, back to the people they cared about.”
A third medical student who also spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation described how the bodies are used for medical education. They say bodies are not perfused and only used for the purpose of anatomical education.
The student also said a ceremony is held at the end of the year where families of donors are thanked by the university.
That, for the student, was what made the military training program so “bizarre.”
“The curriculum stresses that this person signed their body over for this purpose. That this is sacred,” the student said.
The third student said that when they saw Keck’s response to the letter, they were confused as to why they even chose to respond given how “dismissive” they felt the letter was.
“It feels insulting that they’re responding as if we can’t read. It’s so obviously at odds with reality,” the third student said.
The dean’s letter also says the program brings in surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists from Israel, but does not include any mention of their involvement with the Israeli military as part of its “commitment to advancing the highest standards of medical care.”
Champney said USC, along with many other body donation programs in the country, operate on a “broad consent” model. This means the specific details about what the body will be used for is not always provided to donors.
Champney said that his university’s body donation program makes an effort toward detailed consent, something he’d like to see at USC, which operates on a similar amount of donor bodies each year.
“There are donors out there that say you can do anything you want with my body. There are other donors that feel strongly that ‘I’d like this to happen, but I’d rather not have that happen,’” Champney said. “So I think giving donors the opportunity to let us know is valuable.”
In another former Annenberg Media story, multiple people whose family members had been donated to USC and UCSD, as well as potential donors, spoke to the lack of information they were provided as to where they or their loved ones would end up.
USC has not yet responded to Annenberg Media’s request for comment on whether it will continue their program. Despite this, the U.S. Navy filed a notice of intent that states it plans to renew the contract with USC and the Israeli military March 10.
The first medical student said that the program felt contradictory to what Keck presents itself to be, for medical students and the community alike. They said, “Keck is so motivated by caring for the community. They use that as their mission statement everywhere. Partnering with the Israeli military feels so far-fetched.”
“It feels like this is in complete opposition to everything they claim to be motivating, claim to be cultivating in us as future physicians,” the first student said.