UAB stealing dead Alabama prison inmates' organs after autopsies, families claim in lawsuit

[Nevilledog]

https://www.al.com/news/2024/04/uab-stealing-dead-alabama-prison-inmates-organs-after-autopsies-families-claim-in-lawsuit.html

The families of five men who died in Alabama prisons are suing the prison system and the world-renowned UAB medical center, arguing that the state’s biggest hospital is stealing organs from inmates after conducting autopsies.

The various lawsuits were filed in state court last week by three Alabama lawyers.

The families say their loved ones were serving time at either Limestone Correctional Facility or The Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Center when they died. The inmates each died within the past several years, and each had their autopsies conducted by UAB. Following their autopsies, the separate lawsuits allege, the inmates’ bodies were sent to funeral homes, where funeral directors discovered they were missing their organs. One inmate was sent directly for a private autopsy, where a pathologist made the same discovery.

The lawsuits each allege that the university took, and kept, inmates’ organs without consent of next-of-kin.

All people who die in custody have an autopsy, multiple prison officials testified in a federal court hearing earlier this year. Some of those autopsies are done at UAB, while the rest are conducted at the state level by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.

None of the five families gave UAB permission to keep the organs, the lawsuits state.

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