After UC San Diego performed what it called a routine review of USC’s facilities, it determined they no longer met University of California standards regarding facilities handling human remains. 

UCSD and the Keck School of Medicine have been involved in a contract with the United States Navy through which donated cadavers provided to USC by UCSD were used in surgical training for healthcare professionals, including members of the Israel Defense Forces. 

In light of this review, the school decided to no longer provide donated cadavers to USC. 

“Following changes to USC facilities, UC San Diego reviewed the site and determined that the surgical skills laboratory now being used by USC does not meet the UC standard requiring that courses involving human remains be conducted in facilities specifically designed and maintained for human surgical education and training,” read a UC statement to the Daily Trojan.

On Wednesday, the Keck School of Medicine told the Daily Trojan it would not be renewing its contract with the Navy, which expired Thursday. Keck said it made the decision because UCSD would no longer provide donated bodies. 

The University declined to comment on what changed. UCSD did not respond to a request to comment in time for publication about the changes.

First reported by Annenberg Media, the most recent contract was part of an almost decade-long effort by the Navy to set up such a program. In 2018, the Navy, through the Department of Defense, submitted a notice of intent to begin purchasing bodies — specifically naming USC and its Surgical Skills and Education Center at Health Sciences Campus as the source. 

“During a phone conference between [the Navy Trauma Training Center] and [the Naval Medical Logistics Command] in 2016, it was determined that, due to credentialing issues, foreign medical students are not allowed to touch patients at the medical facility; therefore, cadavers must be used,” the notice read.

The notice stated that the Fresh Tissue Dissection Laboratory training courses were for IDF personnel registered at the NTTC, and based on a signed agreement between the Navy Surgeon General and the IDF Surgeon General. 

The University said bodies donated to USC’s Anatomical Gift Program were not used to train IDF healthcare professionals. The program is intended to use donated bodies to teach USC and Keck students about anatomy. 

Thomas Champney, who took over coordination of the South Florida Willed Body Program in 2010, stressed that such cadaver programs should not use a broad consent mechanism that allows organizations to do anything with a body once donated. Rather, Champney pitched specific consent, where individuals are at least aware of exactly how the bodies are being used and by whom. 

Keck recently updated its donor application form and website to indicate potential involvement of non-USC participants — including education, research, healthcare, government and industry partners “in accordance with applicable law and USC policy.” 

Champney, also a professor at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, said there is a lack of a legal framework to inform body donation and cadaver programs, allowing such University contracts as well as for-profit organizations that “encourage people to donate to their company,” which then “sells off those individuals.”

“All of these individuals donate their bodies altruistically. They do not get any recompense, no financial payment,” Champney said. “My major ethical concern with many of these programs is the financial aspects of how they’re run. … Do the families who are donating know that [military medic training is] taking place?” 

Annenberg Media reported that the Navy has paid the University more than $860,000 for at least 89 cadavers, and issued another contract that would give the school an additional $225,000 for more bodies, purchased at the Navy’s discretion. In seven years, the outlet said, USC earned nearly $1.1 million. 

“USC did not profit off donated bodies provided through UCSD,” the Keck statement read. “The Navy was charged at cost for obtaining bodies, plus fees for our surgeon expertise and oversight, the time of skilled technicians, and marginal overhead cost.”

The University declined to comment on how much it cost USC or the Keck School of Medicine to uphold its side of the contract. 

Since October 2025, community organizations already protesting the University have spoken out against the contract. Such groups include USC South Central Against Labor Exploitation-Students for Justice in Palestine, a group unaffiliated with USC.

“Members of SJP are thrilled because this is the result of the root of our labor, of what we’ve been trying to push the administration to do,” said a member of SCALE-SJP, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation. “We’re also just [experiencing] mixed feelings because they’re not ending it for the sake of morality.”

The Keck School of Medicine statement said that “protest groups did not play a factor in this decision—the partnership was no longer feasible without donated bodies from UCSD.” 

The same day USC announced it would not renew the contract — one day before its expiration — SCALE-SJP conducted a “phone zap,” calling President Beong-Soo Kim’s office demanding that USC end the contract from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“Our movement … is part of this larger goal to end USC’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing war crimes against Palestine,” a member of SCALE-SJP said. “For them to end the contract not because of recognizing that complicity or wanting to end that complicity, it feels a bit disappointing, but it’s not surprising.”

The SCALE-SJP member said that despite the University denying that protests caused the decision not to renew the contract, they believe the protests helped raise awareness of the cadaver contract and USC’s actions. 

A SCALE-SJP protest outside Bovard Auditorium at the same time as an Open Dialogue Project event on Sept. 3 called for the contract’s end. 

Nearly two weeks later, during a Sept. 15 ODP event, a student accused the program of being hypocritical for discussing democracy while the University was actively involved in the contract, leaving families who donated bodies uninformed on how they would be used. 

President Beong-Soo Kim responded to the question, offering to host an ODP event specifically on the issue. 

“Let’s have an Open Dialogue event about it, and then we can have a rational, full conversation about it,” Kim said.

In the same statement to the Daily Trojan, the Keck School of Medicine said that ODP “reached out to the few students raising concerns about the program, and those students refused to participate in a public conversation about the facts of this matter.” 

The statement continued, saying that the Keck School of Medicine “would have been happy to engage” in a conversation with the students, but that it is irrelevant now that the contract is over.  

“We didn’t think the structure of the Open Dialogue event would be the standard of the conversation we wanted to have,” the SCALE-SJP member said. “Genocide is not a topic that can just be engaged in in a dialogue or debate like that of the Open Dialogue Project.”

Aside from the political backlash against the cadaver contract, Champney stressed the importance of stronger legal and ethical protections for families involved in such donations. 

“I really wish we would have better legal guidelines as to what we can and cannot do,” Champney said. “Groups like [institutional review boards] look over human research, but IRBs only work on living individuals. … [When] they want to do research on a deceased individual, there’s no IRB [or] ethics panel that needs to be done.”