Cadavers donated to UCSD used to train Israel Defense Force surgeons

dailycal.org · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

Full Article

If a family or individual donates their body to UC San Diego when they die, it could end up on a United States Navy operating table training surgeons for the Israel Defense Force. A complex series of contracts among UCSD, the University of Southern California, the U.S. Navy and the IDFallows for the transfer of dozens of bodies donated to science, as first reported by the USC’s Annenberg Media.According to the UC system and USC, this is business as usual. The flow of cadavers begins with UCSD’s Body Donation Programunder the UC Anatomical Donation Program. According to UC Executive Director of Anatomical Services Brandi Schmitt, UCSD is the only UC campus providing bodies to USC. The contract, which donors sign as part of UCSD’s program,stipulates that donated bodies may be provided to UC educators, students or researchers, or shared outside the UC system for medical training and research. The five locations with a UC Anatomical Donation Program that accept donations receive more than 1,000 donations annually.According to Schmitt, the campus program that initially collects the body has the right to use or distribute it — prioritizing itself, other UC campuses, then other public and finally all academic institutions. The decision on where to send donations falls to campuses’ local donor program committees. “We have a long-standing relationship with USC,” Schmitt said. USC, which operates its own donor program receiving about 100 donations a year, has sourced bodies from UCSD since at least 2021. That same year, a quote request from the U.S. Navy directed USC to procure bodies from UCSD for the Navy Trauma Training Center at Los Angeles General Medical Center. That trauma center is run by USC’s Keck School of Medicine and is designed to provide intense training to surgeons deploying with military units. Since at least 2013, the Navy has trained IDF surgeons as part of its programming there. “The courses under the Navy’s contract comprise a very small portion of the trainings conducted in 2024-25 in the lab, where trainings for more than a dozen medical specialties are conducted from orthopedics to cardiothoracic surgery and neurosurgery,” said USC spokesperson Lauren Bartlett in an email. “The center has a comprehensive set of policies that follow all applicable regulations, including for the use of donated bodies.” Federal contracts between the Navy and USC dating back to 2018 show USC provided at least 89 bodies to the Navy’s trauma center’s programs, at least 32 of which were used to train IDF medical personnel. In 2018, the earliest year for which The Daily Californian could review records, the Navy contracted with USC to provide eight bodies. A contract between the Navy and USC beginning in 2022 — when the program resumed operations — shows an order for 12 bodies. A contract has been extended repeatedly since then, and is now ongoing until September 2026. The value of the latest and ongoing contract sits at $741,268.According to Bartlett, UCSD provides the majority of these cadavers. “The requests that come to us and the requests that we honor are for training healthcare professionals,” Schmitt said. “These are healthcare professional trainings, and yes, I understand that some of these healthcare professionals are coming from the military, but we look at the underlying ask, not the requester necessarily.”Schmitt maintained that the UC system operates within best ethical practices. She took issue with describing the UC system’s practice as selling cadavers or labeling training for trauma response as military training, saying it was “a little inflammatory.”She emphasized that the UC system prioritizes transparency and works to disclose all possible uses of a donation, and that it allows donors to retract their donation at any time.The UCSD contract does not specifically mention possible use by healthcare professionals in a foreign military. The UC system does not make any money from its cadaver program, although it does charge to recoup costs. Schmitt said it usually runs a deficit anyway. When asked whether the UC system was considering changing its practices around cadavers in light of the Annenberg Media investigation, UC Health spokesperson Heather Harper, who was also present at the interview with Schmitt, said, “We’re not going to respond to that kind of question about an investigation. I think Brandi has laid out our policies, our programs, our practices … I think that explains where we are on the topic.”