One man is dealing with an unimaginable nightmare today, after learning that his beloved mother’s body was handled in a horrific way after he submitted her remains for Alzheimer’s research.
WATCH: Mum’s body was strapped to a chair and blown up by the military
Loving son Jim Stauffer thought he was doing a good thing for sufferers of the disease when he made the donation in the US state of Arizona, but is now dealing with deep trauma after learning his mum Doris’ body was improperly on-sold to military testers, who strapped her body to an apparatus and blew her up to simulate war damage.
Knowledge of the ‘blast testing’ experiment now haunts all of Jim’s memories of his mother, and he is struggling to deal with the horror.
Doris, 73, had endured Alzheimer’s, despite not carrying any known genes for the condition, and doctors had reportedly indicated studying her body could be beneficial for science, leading Jim to arrange the donation to the Biological Resource Center (BRC). The company had reportedly been recommended by a nurse.
‘I feel foolish,’ a distressed Jim told local TV station FOX6. ‘Because I’m not a trusting person, but in this situation you have no idea this is going on — you trust. I think that trust is what they fed on.’
While he received some ashes from the company, it turns out they had merely detached one of Doris’ hands from her body, cremated it, and sent the rest – including her brain – to the military testers, who exposed the body to explosive detonation, to ‘get an idea of what the human body goes through when a vehicle is hit by an IED.’
Jim had specifically declined any experimentation with explosives when he signed over his mother’s remains, strictly for relevant medical research. Donating families are given documentation where they stipulate, via signature, the exact kind of experimentation they agree to.
It has now emerged that at least 20 other bodies were given to the military without the permission of donating families.
The company made US$5,893 each from the sales.
‘I don’t see a pathway of ever getting past this,’ Jim says of his anguish. ‘Every time there’s a memory, every time there’s a photograph you look at there’s this ugly thing that happened just right there staring right at you.’
Let’s hope there is some resolution for Jim, and justice soon.
