Texas County Adopts Policy to Ensure Unclaimed Remains Are Treated with Dignity

This article is partDealing with the dead“A series that investigates the use of unclaimed corpses for medical research.

A Texas county that for years gave unclaimed bodies to a local medical school without family consent will now cremate or bury those people — but only after authorities document that they have done everything they can to contact family members.

D Revised rulesThe latest change requested by NBC News was unanimously approved Tuesday by the Tarrant County Commissioners Court investigation Revealed how the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth turned over hundreds of human remains unclaimed to other schools, medical technology companies and the military. The bulk of the unclaimed bodies — those whose families were unable to arrange funerals or could not be found — came from Tarrant and Dallas counties, which each saved half a million dollars a year in burial and cremation costs.

“The county is now in a position to do something ethically, compared to before when we relied on the University of North Texas Health Science Center to conduct our business,” said Commissioner Alyssa Simmons after the vote on Tuesday.

Tarrant County commissioners discussed terminating their contract with the University of North Texas Health Science Center at a Sept. 17 meeting.Shelby Taber for NBC News

Tarrant County has entrusted the task of contacting the families of the deceased and cremating their remains at the Health Sciences Center. The new policy shifts that responsibility back to the county – at an estimated cost of $675,000 per year.

Authorities in Tarrant and Dallas counties justified sending the unclaimed bodies to the health sciences center, saying their use for training and research would help improve medical care for survivors. NBC News repeatedly failed to reach relatives who could be reached before the bodies were declared unclaimed.

The Commissioners Court did not publicly discuss the details of the new policy — or its cost — before voting unanimously to adopt it. Commissioners Court records indicate the county has $57,760 in a funeral account and will need to find additional money to cover the cost of the new policy.

A spokesman for Judge Tim O'Hare, Tarrant County's top elected official, said in a statement that Tuesday's vote was “important to honor the dignity and memory of the deceased, which the county is responsible for administering after his death.”

D Policy Document The county directs the medical examiner's office, along with funeral homes, medical facilities, and nursing homes, to attempt to locate and notify the deceased's relatives “using all available information and means” and to detail these efforts in writing. Before cases can be referred to the county as a non-complaint agency, facilities must file a sworn statement with the county clerk that they cannot identify the person's next of kin; Make at least three attempts on three different days to contact family members by phone, email, text message or knocking on the door; Or determine that families refuse to accept or cannot bear the responsibility. The policy adds another layer of oversight by having the county Department of Human Services make its own efforts to contact families.

Only then, and 11 days after the person's death, can the county cremate or bury the body.

The revised rules give priority to cremation of unclaimed bodies, which is cheaper than burial. But they allow burials if the dead are unidentified, are military veterans or want to ban cremation, or if families oppose cremation. The new policy requires counties to give “reasonable consideration” to the religion of the deceased.

'Dealing the Dead' Sparks Change

Tarrant developed the new principle with the help of Eli Shoup, a bioethicist at the University of Texas at Arlington. For years, Shupe urged authorities to stop providing unclaimed cadavers to health sciences centers, saying it was unethical to dissect and study them without their consent.

Although the practice is legal in most of the country, including Texas, many body donation programs have banned it and some states have banned it. The changes are part of an evolution in medical ethics that requires anatomists to treat human specimens with the same dignity shown to living patients.

In an interview on Tuesday, Shupe said he approved of the policy, although he preferred burial as the default rather than cremation, as many religions favor it.

“The county has done a very good job of taking responsibility for its ethics oversight and correcting it here,” he said.

An NBC News investigation found that the health sciences center received about 2,350 unclaimed bodies from Tarrant and Dallas counties over the past five years. The center rents some of them, charging $1,400 for the entire body, $649 for the head and $900 for the torso.

Dale Leggett, who died at Tarrant County Hospital in May 2023, was among those whose bodies were turned over to the health sciences center without consent and rented to out-of-state agencies — a fact his brother, Tim Leggett, learned just two weeks before the NBC News report later. 1,800 nominees whose bodies went to the program.

Dale Leggett when he was in high school.
Dale Leggett when he was in high school.Courtesy of Tim Leggett

Tim Leggett said his 71-year-old brother was reserved and lonely, so it was not unusual to go more than a year without hearing from him. Dale didn't even like taking photos; There was no chance, Leggett said, that he would want to dissect her body for research.

While she is still waiting to hear from the Health Sciences Center about the location of her brother's body, and is angry that she and her sister were left in the dark, Leggett said she is relieved to know that Tarrant County is implementing a policy . Avoid similar failures in the future.

“Someone,” he said, “must learn of the death of a family member from a news report.”

NBC News has now identified at least 21 cases in which families learned weeks, months or years later that relatives were cared for at health sciences centers. Seven families, including Leggett, learned about what happened from NBC News.