The University of Southern California has ended an arrangement involving the transfer of donated human cadavers for medical training provided to Israeli military personnel, according to USC's Annenberg Media.
The university concluded the agreement between its Keck School of Medicine and the U.S. Navy on Thursday, ending a program that spanned more than five years and generated more than $1 million for the university.
Officials at the medical school said the decision did not stem from recent student demonstrations sparked by media disclosures of the initiative. Instead, the school confirmed the agreement ended because the University of California San Diego (UCSD) declined to continue supplying donated bodies for the venture.
The University of California Health Communications team explained that UCSD ceased transfers because the receiving surgical skills lab failed to satisfy regulations requiring courses with human remains to take place in specialized surgical facilities. The Keck School noted that USC did not profit from the donated remains.
There was previously no indication of what purposes bodies could serve following donation, and donor families got no prior notice that their relatives' remains could be utilized by the U.S. military, according to the report.
The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), Southern California's largest Muslim civil rights organization, welcomed the contract termination.
