Kelvin Moore's family plans lawsuit over missing organs
Kelvin Moore: Dead Alabama Man’s Body Inexplicably Released To His Family Without Any Organs, Heinous Harvesting Allegations Revealed
Source: fstop123 / Getty
This is one of those stories that is both sad and infuriating at the same damn time.
Kelvin Moore was an inmate at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, the Donaldson Correctional Facility, Limestone Correctional Facility, and two others while serving a 99-year sentence for two counts of attempted murder, one count each of burglary, assault, and kidnapping. According to new reporting by Andscape, on July 21, 2023, 90 minutes after speaking to him on the phone, Kelvin’s mother Agolia Moore was informed by the chaplain at Limestone that her 43-year-old son had died from an overdose of fentanyl. Despite being stricken with grief, Ms. Moore’s eyebrow raised at a question that the chaplain asked…
“He said, ‘Who’s over him?’ ” Agolia Moore, 82, said when I met with her in Mobile. “I said, ‘I am. I’m his mother.’ I said, ‘He has no wife. No kids. I am over him.’ ”
Less than a week later, after the University of Alabama at Birmingham performed an autopsy on Kelvin’s body, the local mortician in the family’s home of Mobile, Alabama took custody of his remains and noticed that many of his major organs had been removed. To say that the family was incensed and confused is an understatement. So much so that even on his deathbed a few months after his son’s passing, Kelvin’s father Johnnie told Agolia to find out what happened to their son.
“My husband was on his deathbed but he said, ‘Lo. There’s something wrong about what happened to Kelvin. It’s not right.’ He said, ‘Stick with it,’ and we’re going to stick with it,” she said.
Even after Samuel Jackson Mortuary and an angry Simone Moore, Kelvin’s brother, contacted UAB to demand his proper remains they were told flat-out that the school was keeping the organs for “further study”. To put it plainly, this is not a thing. Medical schools and educational programs have to be granted permission by the family to keep organs. Even “body brokers” who facilitate the transactions between medical research parties and families have to adhere to this legal tenet. Under no circumstances can an entity or person harvest body parts by saying, “Ah, well, this person is dead and doesn’t need them anymore”.
That’s not how any of this works.
Flip the page to read more disturbing details about the allegations against UAB.
Source: Jacob Boomsma / Getty
University Of Alabama Birmingham Students Raise Questions About Inmate Cadavers
During the research process for this story, Andscape spoke to 13 former UAB medical students who raised their concerns to the Department of Pathology and the school’s ethics committee in 2018 about the amount of incarcerated persons whom they were studying.
“I remember someone from the Department of Pathology writing down, ‘No more than one-third of the specimens came from incarcerated people,’ ” a former student said.
“And it seems like to them, they were saying that that wasn’t a disproportionate number, but to me, that stood out because one-third of the population of Alabama is not incarcerated.”
Upon facing off in a tense meeting with UAB’s administration, the students were essentially told that not asking permission from families was a “ask forgiveness, not permission” policy that the University felt was for the greater good.
Two faculty representatives contended that the university’s practice of not getting family consent was the right way to approach their work. According to a report from the meeting, the faculty members argued: “Organs removed from a cadaver’s body during autopsy are then used for the secondary purposes of teaching future physicians and thereby benefits future patients. If such uses are disallowed, these specimens would only be disposed of, serving no useful purpose.”
It should go without saying that a great many of these cadavers were Black men just like Kelvin Moore. Eventually, the family was able to obtain Kelvin’s remains which were given to them in a red medical bag that they never opened. The bag was buried with Kelvin at his funeral. However, in light of the lawsuit that they are planning, Kelvin’s body may have to be exhumed so those alleged organs can be examined. Technically, UAB could have put anyone’s organs in that bag just to quell the controversy.
We’re staying on top of this story and will have more information as it becomes available.
