UC Got Body Parts Warning a Year Ago

State health inspectors alerted top University of California officials in February 2003 about possible misuse of donated cadavers at the UCLA School of Medicine, but a year passed before officials at the medical school looked into an alleged ring of body parts profiteers, according to state documents released Monday.

Correspondence given to The Times by the state Department of Health Services showed that its investigators had long been concerned about the activities of Ernest V. Nelson, a dealer in cadavers.

This month, UCLA police arrested Nelson on suspicion of receiving stolen goods and arrested Henry G. Reid, director of UCLA’s willed body program, on suspicion of grand theft. University officials have said that Reid sold body parts to Nelson and that Nelson resold them for profit.

Nelson apparently charged three times the prices listed by the medical school when it sold body parts to researchers for cost, according to documents filed in court by UCLA police to get search warrants. Selling body parts for cost is legal; selling them for profit is not.

State investigators began looking into Nelson and his background when they received tips that he was fraudulently claiming that corpses had been screened for infectious diseases and that he was keeping human remains in his garage. Nelson told buyers that the body parts came from a UC willed body program, according to investigators. In February 2003, agency officials brought their concerns to University of California officials.

“Based on information that has been gathered in this inquiry, it appears that this individual may be misrepresenting an association with the University of California,” wrote Tom Tempske, a laboratory examiner with the health department, in a Feb. 20, 2003, fax. Tempske asked for the UC system’s help in determining if Nelson “now or ever has obtained cadaveric tissue from any of the UC willed body programs.” State inspectors also met with UC system officials weeks later to discuss the matter.

UCLA officials have said, in light of those inquiries, that they questioned Reid about his association with Nelson, and that Reid produced a document showing that their interaction was minimal. UCLA officials also told health services investigators that they believed that the problem would not recur, because they had stopped sending body parts outside the university.

Lavonne Luquis, a spokeswoman for the UC system, said Monday that Reid promised to recover all of the body parts given to Nelson.

“The basic problem is that we essentially had a double agent working against us,” Luquis said. Reid “enjoyed the trust of campus administrators. He was saying, ‘I’m going to deal with this.’ They had no reason to disbelieve him at that time.”

Luquis said UC regents would discuss the matter Thursday.

“I’m sure in hindsight, a lot of people wish it had happened” differently, she said. “This at the time did not seem to merit anything beyond the attention it received.”

The documents also revealed that UCLA police investigators had seized the cremated remains of 23 people who donated their bodies to science -- remains that some relatives were told had long since been scattered.

“Barbaric,” said a woman who learned Monday that her husband’s ashes had been seized in a series of raids.

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she and her husband believed that donating his remains would serve science. “We felt it would do some good, but it wasn’t helping science, it was helping a greedy individual with no conscience.”

Search warrant documents revealed that a second employee of UCLA’s program, Keith Lewis, told university lawyers that he had received money for helping Nelson cut up cadavers in UCLA Medical Center’s seventh-floor refrigerator. Lewis, according to UCLA police, said that in one instance, he had prepared 10 heads for Nelson and that on two occasions he had received $1,000 to $2,000.

Lewis, who is on leave from UCLA, has not been accused of a crime. He has declined comment.

The state health agency first began looking into the misuse of cadavers in 2001 when it was investigating the alleged improper sale of remains by a Riverside County crematory operator. After the operator was arrested, Nelson’s name arose as the person believed to be selling body parts to the crematory operator’s former clients.

The state investigator looked into whether Nelson had sold 66 torsos from UCLA to a San Diego County company, NuVasive Inc., without testing them for infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. The investigator found that the testing documents that had been given to NuVasive were fraudulent, according to affidavits

The investigator talked to Reid about Nelson, and Reid allegedly said that Nelson had planned to give the parts to an orthopedic surgeon for research. Reid, learning that the bodies hadn’t been tested, told the investigator that he would cut ties with Nelson.

NuVasive officials said Monday that they had turned over all their records to the state and UCLA. Executive Vice President Keith Valentine said the company had believed that the records given to them by Nelson were accurate.

“This comes down to Nelson and UCLA pointing fingers at one another, but the documentation that we have shows negative test results,” Valentine said. “In the end, all we can go by is what he says his findings were.”

As soon as the company received reports that the tests might have been inaccurate, it quarantined the bodies and returned them to UCLA.

“It’s unfortunate that all this happened, and we certainly aren’t very pleased by this at all,” Valentine said, adding that the company had paid Nelson for some bodies that it never received.

“We’ve provided every single bit of records that had been asked of us,” he said.

Documents released Monday by the state health department included extensive correspondence with NuVasive, including bills from Nelson to the company. The billings show that Nelson began providing cadavers for the company in January 2001, charging $2,100 each for “fresh cadaver torso specimens.” Documents showed that the company had paid Nelson at least $115,000 between January 2001 and December 2002.

According to the documents, Nelson told Tempske that he had not distributed body parts for “the last couple of years.” The NuVasive invoices appear to contradict that claim.

Tempske said in a letter that his agency didn’t have the authority to pursue Nelson for falsely claiming that body parts had been tested for disease. The documents don’t indicate whether Tempske or any other state investigator looked at the question of whether Nelson was selling body parts for a profit, tested or otherwise.

UCLA began the nation’s first willed body program in 1950, and for years allowed researchers to purchase excess cadavers at the university’s cost. That practice stopped 15 months ago because, university officials said, it was too difficult to keep track of the bodies and whether their use was legitimate once they had left the campus.

But until then, the university had a price list for body parts. An embalmed cadaver sold for $1,000, enough to cover preparation charges. A torso brought $500, a knee $150 and a shoulder $175.

Nelson charged much more to his clients, according to a letter supposedly from Reid and included in the search warrant. The letter was written after Nelson was forced to return hundreds of body parts to UCLA in early 2003 because of the state Department of Health Services’ inquiry into his dealings. His lawyer contended that when Nelson returned the parts -- including 168 shoulders, 235 arms and 68 knees -- Reid promised in the letter to reimburse him $241,000, which constituted the “total market value” of the parts.

Earlier this year Nelson’s lawyer filed a claim with UC regents for that $241,000, which triggered the current investigation and arrests.

The itemized listing cited $500 for a knee and shoulder and $2,100 for a torso. According to search warrant documents, Reid denied that he had written the letter that promised to reimburse Nelson.

Reid admitted during an interview with UCLA lawyers on Feb. 26 that he had received $50,000 to $100,000 from Nelson, according to the search warrant document. He also admitted that he had retained a spreadsheet that listed all of the body parts that he had sold to Nelson.

But he said that no invoices had been created. Nelson has told The Times that Reid did give him invoices on UCLA letterhead, and Nelson’s lawyer gave The Times copies. According to those documents, Nelson paid more than the prices on UCLA’s price lists but less than he sold the parts for.

Reid’s new lawyer, Mel Sacks, said he was still trying to familiarize himself with records and documents in the case.

“I don’t know how much of this is fact or fiction,” Sacks said about Reid’s case. “As far as I can see right now, nothing is substantiated that he did anything wrong.”

Sacks said it appeared that both UCLA officials and Nelson were telling stories that would protect them. “There’s all these other documents that there’s no verification that they’re authentic,” he said.

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Times staff writer Peter Hong contributed to this report.