Some dead bodies donated to research in US end up in warehouses of horrors

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Dead human bodies are critical to medical training, physicians and researchers say. And thousands of Americans are happy to donate their meat suits for the greater good after they're gone. But in the US, a body's trip from a morgue to a medical school or lab can be gruesome, shady, and expensive. Some don't make it at all. Instead, bits and pieces of donated loved ones-sometimes disassembled with chainsaws-end up decomposing in parking lots, forgotten in unplugged freezers, and tossed unceremoniously into incinerators.

And law enforcement can do nothing-there are few to no laws that regulate the grim industry of human body brokering. Grieving families, who are often misled and in the dark about the fate of their loved ones, can be left horrified.

That's all according to a new investigative report by Reuters, which tracked the practices and pricing of dozens of such brokers across the country. They found that the lucrative business includes a bloody splattering of practices-some ethical, lots not-that can bring in millions to even the most shoddy and small brokers.

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