Harvard announced this week that it had agreed to pay $53 million to settle a class-action lawsuit related to the sale of body parts stolen from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) morgue.
The agreement, which was expected to receive preliminary approval at a court hearing on Wednesday, concludes a yearslong saga that began in 2023, when Cedric Lodge, the morgue’s former manager, was indicted after a federal investigation found that he was part of a criminal network that bought and sold human remains across the country. From 2018 through 2022, the investigation found, Lodge had stolen heads, brains, skin, bones, and other body parts from cadavers that had been donated for research and teaching through the Anatomical Gift Program at HMS. Lodge was one of seven people indicted (and the only Harvard employee), and last December he was sentenced to eight years in prison, after pleading guilty to one count of interstate transport of human remains. He was fired by Harvard in 2023, after the federal investigation came to light.
Family members of people who had donated their bodies filed a dozen lawsuits against Harvard, accusing it of negligence and failure to protect the remains. In announcing the settlement agreement this week, Harvard said it would establish two class-action funds totaling $53 million and that a third-party administrator would be appointed to distribute the funds to affected families. That process would take months, the University said.
The settlement includes other measures, too. HMS pledged to issue a live webinar statement to families confirming that Lodge’s acts were “morally reprehensible and inconsistent with the standards that Harvard University and HMS expect for the treatment of anatomical donors and their loved ones.” And HMS will also summarize improvements made to the Anatomical Gift Program. An independent review conducted by a panel of three outside experts in 2023 recommended improvements to morgue staff screening and training, as well as more rigorous controls and tracking procedures for donated remains. This week, HMS leaders said in a statement that the school had enacted those recommendations, making “important and sustained progress over the past two years.”
Additionally, the settlement agreement requires that HMS establish an annual financial aid scholarship honoring anatomical donors, beginning in the 2027-2028 academic year.
In a letter this week to the Medical School community, HMS dean George Q. Daley and dean for medical education Bernard S. Chang wrote that the crimes uncovered in 2023 “do not reflect the reverence we hold for the altruistic individuals who selflessly donate their bodies to our Anatomical Gift Program (AGP) to provide essential educational opportunities to medical and dental students, practicing surgeons, and allied health professionals. We reaffirm our deep sorrow and empathy for the families of donors who may have been impacted.”
They called Lodge’s actions “despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community.”
In their message, Daley and Chang also wrote, “We are grateful to be working together with the plaintiffs to move forward in a way that prioritizes support for families and the AGP and avoids prolonged litigation. While Lodge’s sentencing concludes the criminal case against him, and the class action settlement agreement when fulfilled would conclude the civil cases, the process of recovering from this painful incident continues.”
