Cook County donates poor dead bodies to organization accused of losing remains, lying

Effective September 27, 2011, unclaimed bodies at the Cook County morgue will be donated to an organization called The Anatomical Gift Association.

Dead bodies that are decomposed, weigh more than 300 pounds, or belonged to patients with HIV or AIDS, will be buried "in the usual fashion".

The directive was delivered in a memo by Chief Medical Director, Doctor Nancy Jones.

If loved ones cannot afford to pay for a burial, their deceased family members' bodies will butchered in the name of science, and arguably, profit.

Cook County officials claim that "donating" the bodies is a cost effective way of dealing with unclaimed corpses. But is it really?

At one point, Cook County had a contract with GSSP Enterprises Incorporated; a Dayton, Ohio-based company that was hired to remove dead bodies from crime scenes.

During their employ, GSSP reportedly mixed up bodies, stacked corpses on top of one another, and violated their contractual agreement regarding the use of minority subcontractors.

A 2009 NBC News article indicated at the time, Cook County paid GSSP $690 per body removal. Why is this information relevant to Cook County's new policy on unclaimed corpses?

It's important for several reasons.

According to The Anatomical Gift Association's website, the donor is responsible for the cost of transporting the body to their facility.

"Transportation of the donor’s remains to the AGA is the responsibility of the donor," said AGA's webpage.

If it cost Cook County $690 in 2009 to take a dead body to the morgue; today, how much is it going to cost taxpayers to move the same body, twice?

Based on a quick Internet search, you can get an all inclusive cremation package for under 700 bucks in Illinois. So I doubt the real reason these bodies are being "donated" is to save money.

After all, this is Chicago. Someone, somewhere, is getting a kickback.

And what about The Anatomical Gift Association? Who are these people?

In 2009, Chicago attorneys Leahy and Hoste filed a lawsuit against The Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois and Midwestern University.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants lost a donor's body and lied to a grieving widow about the whereabouts of her husband's remains.

Margaret H. Hejna donated her husband's body, James J. Hejna, to The Anatomical Gift Association in January of 2003.

It took Margaret six years of legal wrangling to discover that AGA forwarded her husband's body to Midwestern University, who without Margaret's knowledge, cremated her husband's body and gave his remains to an unrelated family.