All the Gory Details

Organ donation is so common and regulated, it’s specified on your driver’s license. But what does it mean to leave your remains “to science” and medical research? Who gets the body? What really happens to it? In January of 2014, an FBI and Arizona Attorney General’s Office task force conducted a search and seizure raid on Biological Resource Center, a Phoenix body brokering business that recruited families to donate their loved ones’ bodies for use in scientific research. The task force discovered the stuff of nightmares. Employees with zero medical training were conducting dissections of human bodies with DIY grade electric saws. Twelve tons of severed torsos, heads, arms, legs, feet, hands, and spines were stacked and stuffed in huge freezers and marked for sale. Without prior approval, some of the parts were being sold to the Department of Defense. All the Gory Details takes a deep dive into the shocking world of body brokering, a wild west industry that allows a handful of entrepre