The director of the morgue of the prestigious Harvard University Medical School in the US, his wife and four other people were indicted by a federal court on Wednesday on charges of trafficking in organs and human remains, AFP and Reuters reported, citing Agerpres.

“Certain crimes are beyond comprehension,” Pennsylvania federal prosecutor Gerard Karam was quoted as saying in a statement announcing the charges and arrests in the case.

Cedric Lodge, 55, his wife, Denise Lodge, 63, and four others were charged with, among other things, “complicity in the theft and transportation of stolen property,” according to a statement confirming the leaked information. in the daily Boston Globe.

The two Lodges and a third person, Katrina McLean, 44, of Massachusetts, were arrested Wednesday, authorities said.

Shocking details in the US Attorney’s Office’s organ trafficking indictment

According to federal prosecutors, Cedric Lodge is accused of being part of a “national network of individuals who bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard and an Arkansas morgue” from 2018 to 2022.

Lodge “stolen organs and other parts from cadavers donated to science for medical research and education before they were cremated.”

Prosecutors said Lodge, who had worked at Harvard since 1995, sometimes let potential buyers into the school’s morgue to examine bodies and select certain organs. In most cases, buyers then resold them.

“The theft and trafficking of human remains touches the very essence of what makes us human,” prosecutor Gérard Karam stressed, condemning the “disgusting” and “horrific” acts and promising justice for the “victims” and their relatives.

Harvard Medical School’s response to allegations against its former employee

In a publicly released email titled “Disgusting Betrayal,” Harvard Medical School and Faculty Deans George Daly and Edward Hundert expressed their “horror to learn that something so disturbing could happen on a campus dedicated to caring for others.”

Cedric Lodge was fired in early May, and “investigators believe he acted without the assistance of anyone at Harvard,” university officials said, noting that the other people charged “had no connection to Harvard.”

AFP recalls that at the end of 2019, a scandal broke out in France after the press disclosed the terrible conditions in which corpses handed over to science were kept at the University of Paris-Descartes. Several persons, including the former rector of the university, were charged in this case.