According to a report by BBC News on August 19th, Harvard University has agreed to pay $53 million (approximately 356 million RMB) to settle a lawsuit filed by family members who alleged that the university's medical school handled the disposal of donated bodies inappropriately.
The settlement agreement was filed in a Boston court on the 17th, ending the lawsuit against Harvard Medical School. Previously, Cedric Lodge, the former mortuary manager of the school, admitted that he had stolen human remains from the institution and sold them on the black market.
Harvard University is located in Massachusetts, USA. It is a leading private research university and is often regarded as "the oldest institution of higher education in the United States". It is also one of the famous Ivy League universities. Its School of Medicine ranked first globally in the medical field in the QS World University Rankings in 2026.
It is reported that 58-year-old Lodge removed ‘heads, brains, skin, and bones’ from the bodies and sold them online. This illegal activity was alleged to have continued from 2018 to 2021.
Lodge and six other accomplices were charged and pleaded guilty in 2025.
The prosecution accused Lodge of using his position as the manager of the medical school’s “dissection donation program” to dismember corpses donated for medical research.
According to the indictment, Harvard students used these donated bodies for medical research and clinical practice. After being used by the school, these bodies were typically cremated, and the ashes were returned to their families or buried in the university’s medical cemetery.
The indictment states that Loch and his wife sold human body parts to buyers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, “Lodge sometimes allowed others to enter Harvard Medical School’s morgue to inspect the bodies and select the parts they wanted to purchase.”
According to the Department of Justice, Lochi was sentenced to eight years in prison last December, and his wife was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.
Katrina McLean from Salem, Massachusetts, and Joshua Taylor from West Laurens, Pennsylvania, are accused of purchasing these human body parts.
According to the charge sheet, in October 2020, McLain purchased a dissected skin for $600, intending to ‘tannage it into leather’.
Taylor was also accused of making 39 electronic transfers to Mrs. Lodge over a period of four years, intended for the purchase of stolen human body parts, totaling nearly $40,000. The indictment includes an unsettling detail: a PayPal payment of $1,000 was marked with the note “Day 7”.
United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam stated in a statement: "Some crimes are difficult to comprehend. Theft and trafficking of human remains touched upon the very essence of who we are."
In 2023, several civil lawsuits against Harvard were filed, accusing the university of improper management over several years. Although these cases were initially dismissed by state court judges, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts revived the litigation last fall.
On the 17th, Harvard University and the plaintiffs in these cases jointly requested the court to approve a settlement agreement for class-action lawsuits.
Medical School Dean George Daly and Dean of Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, Bernard Zhang, jointly wrote a letter stating: "Lodge's criminal behavior is morally reprehensible and does not meet the standards that Harvard University and Harvard Medical School should uphold when dealing with anatomical donors and their relatives."
The letter also states that starting from the 2027-2028 academic year, the medical school will establish annual scholarships to “thank and commemorate all anatomical donors”.
