S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On today's show , it was student journalist who broke the story about bodies from USC's donors program being sold to the Israeli military for medical training. Well , now they are featured in a new documentary and we'll hear directly from them. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. For years , the University of Southern California has sold cadavers to the U.S. Navy. Many of those bodies were sourced from UC San Diego , but a student investigation found that the Navy has been selling those bodies to the Israeli military for medical training use. A new episode from Al Jazeera's docuseries , direct from With Dina to Curry , digs deeper into the story and features the student journalist who uncovered it. I'm joined now by two of the reporters involved Thomas Murphy , who is a student , journalist and photo editor for the UCSD Guardian. Thomas , welcome.
S2: Hi there. Thank you for having me.
S1: Glad to have you here. Also with us , Jennifer Nair. She's a former investigative reporter with USC Annenberg Media. Jennifer , welcome to you , too.
S3: Thank you for having us.
S1: Glad to have you both here. So Jennifer Annenberg Media first broke this story last year. How did you all first come to find it ? Yeah.
S3: So this story , the first article in what has become a series , went out in October of 2025. The investigation had started a while before then with students who actually graduated in the in May 2025 , and they had received tips from sources. And with a story like this , with the with a story of this gravity and this importance , it takes a while to source that. So the first article came out in October , and we've been adding articles to that series ever since.
S1: Well , you know , I mean , these. Um , I mean , Thomas , you know , like we mentioned , it's just many of these bodies , um , USC sold came from UCSD , which runs its own body donation program.
S2: So I can definitely help with that. So you can imagine this as like multiple links in a chain with UCSD being the source for a bulk of the bodies. Those bodies are transferred to the University of Southern California , um , for which USC pays UCSD a allocation fee , which to our knowledge , is about $2,900. Um , from there , once USC has them , they are then sold to the Navy , and then they are gone. Then they go into the , uh , Israeli Defense Forces training course. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. And these bodies are often donated for scientific research and education.
S2: No. Juniper.
S1: Juniper. No.
S3: No. In the we looked at both of the agreements for , uh , USC and UC San Diego. There's not only no mention of what the bodies could be used for. The fact that they could have been used for this training. But there's also pretty explicit mention and at least one of the contracts that the family's not really allowed to ask , and they will never find out.
S1:
S3: Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: Uh , as best we can tell. Um , medical professionals use surgical implements to simulate , uh , high fidelity injuries on cadavers , bodies which are then used in trainings for , um , Israeli Defense Force medical personnel , uh , as part of a medical training for the kind of injuries that you might expect to see in a combat scenario. So I believe a 2020 report specifically mentions gunshot wounds and blasts explosive damage to the torso. I believe that's what that is. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. You know , you were both responsible for reaching out to the families most affected by this donation program. Um , and , Jennifer , you spoke to Miriam Waltman , whose mother , Jeanette , donated her body to USC. I mean , we have a clip here from the documentary.
S4: You know , it. Things felt very subtle , especially once we did get her ashes back , which , I mean , at this point. Are they even her ashes ? You know , it really has destroyed any trust. You get upset , and I. I love my mom , and I think about her a lot. This is bringing up those kinds of emotions again. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Jennifer , tell me about their story and the impact on the family. Absolutely.
S3: Absolutely. So , Jeanette. Volpone A is , the more I hear about her , the more I learn what an incredible woman she was. She died at the age of 101. If I'm remembering correctly and was able to drive , it was able to operate a motor vehicle until the age of 99. Um , what I what I heard that I just , I , I was stunned. So , uh , towards the end of her life , Jeanette , uh , Jeanette knew that she wanted to donate her body to USC because she lived nearby and was a medic herself. And so , with the help of her granddaughter , Sarah , who I also spoke with , they got that process going and her body was donated in 2021 , if I'm remembering correctly. And the family without much communication , got her ashes back years later , um , and didn't know anything about this program until I managed to find them through some internet sleuthing and talk to Miriam , who ? One of the really interesting things about the clip that was just played is Miriam herself deals with end of life care as part of her profession , and when I spoke to her on the phone was very well , it was not as emotional as you hear her in the clip. She she was very , very calm , very collected and very , very clear headed about this whole process. And so hearing , hearing this emotion from her in the ageless interview was , uh , was really interesting to me. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. And Thomas , you spoke to Jennifer Gomez , whose grandmother donated her body to UCSD. And we've also got a clip from her.
S5: I'm really upset about the facts that are coming out. I think most people , like my grandma , go into a decision like this thinking they're going to do something better for the world , not thinking like , oh , I'm going to donate my body , and somehow it's going to make some military force more powerful.
S1: Yeah , well , her grandmother died before the the USC program began. But tell us about how she learned about this investigation and what her reaction was. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. So Jennifer first learned about it when she saw the UCSD Guardian's , um , coverage of Annenberg reporting , and , I believe , late January. And from there , she left a comment on our post , which is how I reached out to her and we started talking. Um , she was pretty shocked to learn that , uh , cadavers could be used in that way. She didn't expect that. She had no knowledge of it. So , uh , in our conversations , it was really , um , Kind of are heartbreaking to see that revelation come across , because it's not , I suppose , the most clear thing when you hear it initially , like , oh , my grandmother donated her body to this school and now it's being used in this way. It's sort of running counter to what you would expect at the whole time , if that makes sense. Yeah.
S1: Yeah.
S2: I spoke with a man and his wife. The man has a congenital heart defect , um , that he's had since birth. He's beaten every single medical estimate for his survival. Um , he wasn't expected to live to see 20 , but now he's in his mid 40s , so he really is quite an inspiration and a medical marvel. And he was considering donating his body to UC San Diego because he's been treated there before. He's well aware that they have a very strong cardiac program , and he really wanted his body to do some good. He thought that they could do an incredible amount of research , just based on the fact that he is such a medical marvel , but at this point , he is very wary about donating his body to UCSD , and he and his wife have also looked at other body donation programs that are not just at , um , medical institutions or the like. They've also looked at some private companies that deal with the same kind of donations , and they haven't really found one that they feel comfortable donating to simply because of the ways that bodies can be used.
S1: And just a quick question , because , you know , again , people are donating their body for scientific research , for education. Are they even made aware that their bodies are being sold.
S2: That I don't believe is made clear to them in any of the contracts ? These donations are made completely altruistically , so there's no money given to donor families when a donation is made. But once it gets into the possession of the school , the families really don't know what happens beyond that. Like , um , Jennifer mentioned earlier , the Vulcans received their ashes back years later without really much context on what happened. So , uh , basically everything that happens after a body is donated is sort of out of the purview of the families. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. You know , and that that brings us to this whole documentary , because it's produced by Al Jazeera and its social media arm , AJ plus.
S3: AJ Plus and Al Jazeera actually reached out to us. They had some of their own sources. People reached out to them saying , look what these students have done. You should. You should team up with them. You should cover them. And so they reached out to us via email , I believe , and hopped on a zoom call with some of us , and then eventually brought us all into to do this docu series. Mhm.
S1: Mhm.
S2: Like Jennifer just said , that zoom conversation was supposed to be recorded and used in a short little , um , social media video , from what I understand. But then after we finished on our conversation , I believe the producers at AJ plus , uh , just kind of kept talking about it and realized that they wanted to , uh , in their words , do the story justice and give it the kind of reach that they felt it deserved. Um , so the next day they reached out and said , hey , you know , we're in California. We can just go down to LA , we can go down to San Diego. We can interview you guys next week on Thursday. Friday. Um , so in that way , it was definitely a whirlwind. I don't think documentaries are usually done on this quick of a turnaround , but I think the final product , um , is really quite strong , and it really doesn't lead you to assume that it was done on such a time crunch. Mhm. Right.
S1: Right. Well I mean it's groundbreaking , groundbreaking reporting that you all did. And I understand what 5 million views on uh Edge+ across their , their channels. What's the reception been like from where you all said Jennifer I.
S3: It's been overwhelmingly positive , which surprises me to an extent. Any reporting that I've done or that I've seen on Israel and just anything surrounding that is met with a lot of mixed reactions generally. Uh , a lot of comments I've received on a reporting that I've been involved with sometimes accuse me of some wild stuff , frankly , uh , some , some bias , some taking money from foreign governments , which I have not done. And so to see no knowing that that reception was always possible , to see just how overwhelmingly positive the reception was after this docu series came out , was really heartwarming and really pleasantly surprising. And while there have been some negative comments , I would say for every 1 or 2 of those , there have been thousands of really , really positive , really , uh , uplifting comments from viewers about us , about our reporting , which has just been really wonderful to see. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: There's been a lot of really positive responses , I think what I didn't expect before we released this , in terms of the kind of comments we would get , is the incredible amount of people saying , uh , protect these student journalists , are they okay ? Make sure that they're safe. Like , it was a lot of concern for us , which I didn't really expect , but it was it was very welcome to see. Yeah , it's been a very positive response.
S1:
S2: I think the families that , um , are donating their bodies to these institutions really deserve more understanding about how their donations are being used. I think more transparency in regards to this whole system that we have set up in terms of the use of medical cadavers could benefit greatly from more transparency. So I hope that the institutions take steps to be more clear with these families about how exactly these donations are going to be used.
S1: And , Jennifer , I'll let you have the final word here on that.
S3: I would say most of the same thing. Something I always hope when I do. Any kind of reporting like this is just more transparency , more clearness from those involved. And if people do want to continue donating for this purpose , knowing what could happen to their loved ones bodies , that's up to them. But I think everyone wanting to donate has the right to know.
S1: I've been speaking with Thomas Murphy , a student reporter and photo editor for the UCSD Guardian , and Jennifer Garner , a former investigative reporter with USC Annenberg Media , will link to their reporting and the AJ plus documentary on KPBS. Again , the documentary is called Israeli Military Medics Our Training on Dead Americans. It can be found on YouTube. Thomas , Jennifer , thank you so much.
S2: Thank you very much for having us.
S3: Thank you for having us.
S1: That's our show for today.
S6: I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
