cadavers

8 Stories

For These 5, Alzheimer's Was Medically Acquired
Medical Miscue May Have
Given Patients Alzheimer's
NEW STUDY

Medical Miscue May Have Given Patients Alzheimer's

Study suggests disease was triggered by human growth hormone shots derived from cadavers

(Newser) - Doctors once sought to make very short children taller by injecting them with growth hormone taken from the brains of dead people. The procedure was banned 40 years ago—and cadaver-derived pituitary growth hormone (c-hGH) replaced with a synthetic version—when scientists discovered patients had also received bits of protein...

Pitt Students Accused of Abusing Cadavers

The school says such allegations are 'extremely rare'

(Newser) - Students in an anatomy lab class at the University of Pittsburgh were taught about handling cadavers in a respectful manner, but two students allegedly went on to do the opposite. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports Amay Gupta and Sonel Jimenez, both 19, were charged this month with one count each of...

COVID Victim Dissected in Front of Paying Audience

His family says they never gave consent for 'pay-per-view autopsy'

(Newser) - In late August, David Saunders, a 98-year-old decorated World War II veteran from Louisiana, died of COVID, and his widow, Elsie, tried to donate his body to LSU for science, though the university refused due to his COVID status. Through a Baton Rouge funeral home, she found another company that...

Why Thawing the Dead With a Hose Is Basically Legal

Reuters digs into the grim, gruesome, and largely unregulated world of cadavers

(Newser) - When the subject is cadavers, and one of the first sentences is "grisly abuses abound," you know what's to come is likely not for the faint of heart. That's true with Reuters' investigation into the body trade: The story opens with a description of "bits...

Woman Dealt Diseased Body Parts in Grisly Case

Her estranged husband will stand trial in April

(Newser) - A Detroit woman faces up to 10 months in prison for fraud after admitting to renting diseased body parts to researchers. Elizabeth Rathburn, 56—to be sentenced in July—also must pay $55,225 to the American Anesthesiology Association, whose researchers were told the body parts were clean, reports the...

Here's What Creates the Unique Smell of Human Death

New findings could help train better cadaver dogs

(Newser) - Thanks to a team of researchers from Belgium, we may be close to synthesizing and, yes, possibly even bottling and selling the smell of human death, Discovery reports. Eva Cuypers and her team at the University of Leuven separated the tissues and organs of six humans and 26 different animals,...

Nasty Corpse Smell Can Reveal Secrets

Forensic experts measure volatile compounds in cadavers

(Newser) - Yes, corpses smell awful—but more careful scrutiny of that stench may help investigators learn just when a person died, the Royal Society of Chemistry reports. Apparently the trick is to measure volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like sulfurs, alcohols, and nitro compounds that change in combination and quantity as a...

Thank Cadavers for Today's Car Safety

Automakers quietly rely on them in tests

(Newser) - Those cute crash test dummies make for better commercials, but automakers have long relied on a less-publicized way of ensuring safety: cadavers. Dummies and computer modeling have come a long way, but actual bodies provide more accurate results about, say, damage to internal organs in an accident, explains Justin Hyde...

8 Stories