Temecula firm specializes in human body donations for research, medical uses

A firm that has operated quietly in Temecula for the past four years has tapped the growing demand for human bodies for research, training, and other medical uses.

It traces its roots to the mortuary industry.

“It did kind of grow out of that,” said Peter Hamilton, vice president of California operations for Research For Life.

The company has a dual purpose. It offers a no cost alternative to cremations and scattering ashes at sea. It also helps alleviate a shortage of human limbs, tissue, skin and other remains that are used by universities, medical schools, hospitals, biotech companies and other research and medical uses.

It has made inroads among potential donors without relying on such traditional marketing methods as advertising or networking within the local business community.

The firm’s local presence and low profile have surprised some Temecula-area business leaders who are familiar with the regional economic landscape.

“I’ve never heard of them,” said Dennis Frank, who has served as a director, president, or vice chairman of the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, Temecula Valley Hospital, and the Economic Development Corporation of Southwest Riverside County.

Alice Sullivan, the chamber’s chief executive, had a similar reaction when contacted recently by a reporter.

Sullivan said she and other officials of the 954-member chamber do extensive outreach. But Research For Life has operated well below the radar, she said.

“We’ve been to every nook and cranny out there,” Sullivan said. “It would be nice for us just to know they’re in the area.”

Hamilton, who also owns a pair of southwest Riverside County mortuaries, said Research For Life has focused on word of mouth, rather than chamber membership or other networking methods.

One of the company’s chief awareness-raising strategies centers on holding informational workshops at senior centers, mobile home parks, and other locations.

One such presentation held at the Fallbrook Senior Center in October attracted 10 people. There, Peggy Holder, the company’s Temecula-based community coordinator, detailed the program during an hour-long presentation and question-and-answer session.

She explained that Research For Life’s founders recognized the need for such a regional service as customer demands in the mortuary industry steadily transitioned from traditional burials to cremations and, in recent years, to questions about whole body donations.

“We’re letting people know there is a third option,” Holder told her audience. She said that Research for Life will provide donors a no cost cremation and a free urn or scattering of ashes at sea. A death certificate will be filed at no cost, and the urn will be shipped to relatives at no cost following a cremation, she said.

Holder later said three members of that Fallbrook audience had submitted applications to become donors and some others were still deciding.

Holder is based in the firm’s 1,859-square-foot office and storage facility on Temecula’s north side. The office serves a vast region that stretches from the state’s southern boundary to the Ventura area and into Arizona.

The Temecula office has an 11-body storage capacity, and the Murrieta Valley Funeral Home, which Hamilton owns, can accept additional donors. Hamilton also owns Options Funeral and Cremation Service in Lake Elsinore.

Hamilton said activity in Temecula is increasing by 10 percent to 20 percent a year. The firm receives 350 to 370 bodies a year at its Temecula office, he said.

“I think it could be larger, but it’s a long-term process,” Hamilton said in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that is right for everybody.”

Company workers who are trained morticians visit the Temecula office twice a week to transport donated bodies to the firm’s 15,000-square-foot Arizona facility. That facility primarily focuses on surgical procedures and training. The firm is a domestic and international supplier of human tissue for transplants, medical research, and a range of other uses.

The body parts industry has drawn widespread interest in recent years as the demand and uses have multiplied.

In 2006, a book by journalist Annie Cheney probed what has been described as billion-dollar industry. “Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains” by Broadway Books examines how human remains are obtained, processed, marketed, and used.

Major corporations rely on human remains to develop drugs and medical equipment and devices. Universities and medical schools use human remains to teach and practice surgical techniques and evaluate new procedures. Doctors use them to replace heart valves, joints, tendons, burned skin, and numerous other injured and diseased body parts.

Uses have been found for organs, tissue, tendons, torsos, bones, joints, ligaments, limbs, and heads. Human cartilage is seen as especially important because it doesn’t regenerate. Some estimates have assessed the value of a fully dismembered and eviscerated human corpse at close to $10,000.

Unlike organs, which must be matched by blood type and transplanted immediately, tissue use is universal and it can be stored for years.

National Football League quarterback Carson Palmer is perhaps one of the best known recipients of human tissue. Palmer shredded his knee during the 2005 playoffs, an injury that his surgeon described as “potentially career-ending.”

The following year, the Arizona Cardinal starter received an Achilles tendon from a 44-year-old woman who had been killed by a drunken driver nearly two years before Palmer’s injury.

Palmer’s surgery was just one of an estimated 1.5 million tissue transplants a year.

Donate America – a nonprofit alliance of organizations involved in organ, eye and tissue donations – estimates that nearly 124,000 Americans are currently waiting for organ donations. It noted that more than 47,000 corneas and nearly 29,000 organs were transplanted in 2013.

There are more than 50 federally regulated organ procurement organizations in the country. Tissue banks in the United States are regulated by the National Organ Transplant Act, which dictates that tissues cannot be bought or sold.

The law, however, does allow for the reimbursement of costs associated with the recovery, processing, and storing of tissue and for the development of related technologies, according to the American Association of Tissue Banks.

The industry group states that nonprofit and for-profit tissue banks must follow the same regulations and they all share the same goal of making human materials safe and available for transplants and other uses.

Offering what Hamilton called “a little look behind the screen,” he detailed why Research For Life was organized as a for-profit firm. He said the designation can be viewed as “kind of a fine line” that exists in the medical services industry.

As is the case with hospitals, physical therapy providers and hospice services, some tissue banks are organized as nonprofit and others are established as for-profit operations, he said.

He said operating as a for-profit firm allows Research For Life to give donor families a level of service that some university programs or other tissue banks do not. Some organizations may terminate donation agreements if the donor later contracts a contagious disease or if other circumstances occur that prevent the body from being used for research or medical uses, he said.

Such circumstances crop up in nearly 15 percent of the firm’s cases, yet Research For Life will honor its original commitment, he said.

“It’s a very significant percentage,” he said. “We will provide what was promised even if the donor is no longer viable for the intended process.”

More information can be found at http://www.researchforlife.org or by calling (951) 719-3334.