The USC in Southern California has recently terminated a long-standing program for body training. Previously, the university contracted with the U.S. Navy to provide donated bodies for trauma surgery training in Los Angeles. Some of these courses were specifically designed for Israeli military medical personnel.
According to a survey released by Annenberg Media of the University of Southern California in October 2025, the U.S. Navy announced its intention to purchase human cadavers from the University of Southern California as early as the end of 2017, for use in trauma surgery training for medical personnel of the Israeli Defense Forces. Over the following years, the U.S. Navy paid the University of Southern California more than $860,000, involving at least 89 so-called ‘fresh cadavers’. Of these, 32 were explicitly used for training Israeli military personnel.
These training sessions are organized by the U.S. Navy Trauma Training Center and take place at the Los Angeles Comprehensive Medical Center. In addition to military doctors, nurses, and medical personnel preparing for deployment, military surgical teams also participate in the courses. According to the contract documents, the military courses require significant “surgical expertise” and involve hands-on training with fresh cadavers that have not been preserved.
Reports reveal that some bodies are also subjected to “perfusion” treatment, where artificial blood is pumped into the body’s circulatory system to simulate the blood flow and bleeding conditions of real patients, allowing trainees to practice treatments for gunshot wounds, explosive injuries, vascular injuries, and other battlefield traumas. The contract also covers costs related to antibody testing on the bodies, storage in refrigeration, perfusion services, as well as supplies such as scalpels, gloves, and gauze.
Annenberg Media further confirmed that the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is one of the key sources for remains in this project. According to the 2016 agreement, the University of Southern California initially paid a “disposal fee” of $2,900 for each remains obtained from UCSD. By October 2025, UCSD offered a price of up to $4,205 for intact remains that had not been preserved, along with additional transportation costs.
However, the biggest controversy sparked by the related reports is not just the cost, but whether the donors and their families were truly informed.
Initial investigations indicate that there is relatively limited regulation regarding the use of cadavers in American medical education. Many schools adopt a broad “general consent” approach. The University of Southern California’s Human Donation Program previously allowed schools to use cadavers for teaching, research, and other purposes deemed appropriate by the school. However, it was not specified that cadavers could be used by the U.S. Navy, or for training foreign military personnel.
Follow-up reports show that some donor families learned for the first time after media investigations that their relatives' bodies might have been used in U.S. Navy projects. Subsequently, the University of Southern California added a note on its organ donation website's FAQ, stating that the use of donated bodies could be done by the University of Southern California itself, or by its educational, research, medical, government, and industry partners in accordance with law.
However, the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California emphasizes that the cadavers from the university’s own human donation program were not used to train Israeli military medical personnel. The university also stated that it did not profit from the cadavers provided by UCSD. The fees paid by the Navy mainly included the cost of obtaining the cadavers, expenses for surgical experts and supervision, labor costs for technicians, as well as additional management costs.
Nevertheless, this contract still generated over $1 million in revenue for the University of Southern California. Subsequently, students on campus and some medical school students continued to demand greater transparency from the school and protested the related contracts.
On September 23 this year, the Keck Medical School confirmed with Annenberg Media that the University of Southern California would terminate its contract with the United States Navy regarding the handling of remains on September 24, and would not renew it.
The school also stated that the decision to terminate the contract was not due to student protests in recent months, but because UCSD decided not to continue providing the necessary equipment for this project. A spokesperson for the University of California Medical System said that the decision was made because the external technology laboratories associated with the University of Southern California did not meet the standards required by the University of California for courses related to human remains, which must be conducted in facilities specifically designed and maintained for human surgical education and training.
But they did not elaborate further on what aspects of the California State University Laboratory in Southern California did not meet the standards.
Annenberg Media noted that the partnership between the University of Southern California and the U.S. military has spanned over a century. The specific collaboration involving military personnel and 'fresh cadaver dissection training' can be traced back at least to 2017. In fact, military medical personnel have been participating in related surgical courses even earlier, starting no later than 2013.
As the University of California, San Diego ceased providing cadavers, the long-standing contract between the University of Southern California and the U.S. Navy came to an end. The university stated that the purpose of its trauma training program was always to train medical personnel in providing care in traumatic situations. However, after the exposure of the program, it continued to cause controversy within the university, surrounding issues such as whether donors were fully informed, whether the university should use donated cadavers for military training, and whether foreign military forces should be the users of these bodies.
