Body Brokers

Body brokers are those who make a profit providing bodies and body parts for medical research. Who are the body brokers? They are representatives of tissue banks or companies acting as intermediaries between the ones who have bodies, like medical centers, and the ones who need them, like sponsors of surgical seminars.

Federal law bans selling human organs and tissue for transplantation. This law is generally considered a total ban on the sale of all body parts by brokers, but it does not specifically address the conveyance of parts for medical education and research.

Body brokers, who act as go-betweens, including organ recovery agencies, may charge for their work. Many are professionals helping provide research cadavers. Others are entrepreneurs walking a thin line between being legitimate and being outlaws.

The can be big money in being a body broker.

They sometimes charge thousands of dollars for storage, transportation and processing of each body part they deliver. A well-connected body broker who can find buyers for all of a body's parts can make between $100,000 and $300,000 per body.

Sometimes body brokers are caught in scandals such as the one recently at the UCLA medical school.