Niranjana Anandpura was dying in hospice, her skin burning from shingles-induced nerve pain.
For over a decade, she planned on donating her body to science, hoping to train future doctors or advance medical research. As the matriarch’s health declined, her family prepared to honor her final wish.
The University of California San Diego, home to the nation’s second-largest body donation program, was ready to accept her remains.
Her family was hesitant. Unlike most medical schools with similar programs, UCSD requires body donors to waive their right under California law to have their ashes returned to their loved ones.
The policy would prevent Niranjana Anandpura’s family from performing traditional Hindu funeral rites. They didn’t believe the sacrifice was worth it.
The family says Dr. Scott Barton, director of the UCSD Body Donation Program, convinced them otherwise.
“We wanted to make sure my grandma’s body would be treated with respect,” Bhavika Anandpura said in an October interview, alongside her sister, Shuchi. “[Barton] had a whole bunch of reassurances … how they would treat her body with love and care, as if it wasn’t just our loved one, but their loved one as well.”
The sisters say Barton didn’t tell the family that their grandmother’s body could be sent to a military cadaver lab, pumped with fake blood and surgically wounded to resemble a battle victim with gunshot and blast injuries.
It’s unclear whether Niranjana’s remains were used to train combat medics, but public documents show that hundreds of other donors’ bodies were.
According to records covering April 2024 to December 2025, UCSD loaned 517 donor bodies — over half, 273, went to the Department of Defense — the university has not yet released records of transfers outside this period.
The military received more cadavers from UCSD than any other organization, whether a university or private facility.
Despite this, UCSD’s body donation forms, obtained by Times of San Diego, make no mention of the program’s ties to the Department of Defense.
Government spending records show the Department of Defense entered into more than $5 million in contracts to receive cadavers from UCSD since 2008, more than any other cadaver supplier in the country.
The family says that had Niranjana Anandpura known that the military could use her body, she would not have agreed to donate her remains to UCSD.
Her family learned of these ties after student journalists exposed the practice earlier this year.
“[Our grandmother] instilled two things in us,” Bhavika Anandpura said. “One was a deep respect for education, and the other one was a deep resistance to violence and war, and colonialism. And so, for both of those to be in conflict because of UCSD’s actions is jarring.”
Loaning loved ones
The UCSD Body Donation Program, founded alongside the university’s School of Medicine in 1967, describes its goals in its donor application as: “assisting the education of current and future physicians, other healthcare practitioners, anatomists, forensic scientists and mortuary technicians” and “contributing to scientific research.”
Heather Harper, a spokesperson for University of California Health, denied that UCSD profited from its military contracts. In an Oct. 7 statement to Times of San Diego, she said the university classifies the transfers as loans, not sales, and does not sell donated bodies.
The loans resulted in millions of dollars in revenue for the program.
Records show UCSD charges hundreds to thousands of dollars for donated whole bodies and body parts, including arms, organs and portions of skulls. Prices vary by organization type. For a whole cadaver, UCSD charges $2,900 to its own programs, $3,357 to outside educational institutions and $4,205 to industry organizations.
Since 2018, UCSD has charged the Department of Defense the educational rate, according to contracts obtained by Times of San Diego.
Tracking the remains
From April 2024 to December 2025, records from the UCSD Anatomical Materials Review Committee show that UCSD sent 250 cadavers and 20 body parts to a department manager at the Naval Medical Center. The records listed training purposes including “surface and special warfare training,” “emergency medicine,” “general surgery,” “orthopedic procedures” and “tactical combat casualty courses.”
Of the remaining cadavers, UCSD kept 156 bodies for its own education and research programs. Other institutions, including the University of Southern California, San Diego State University and Point Loma Nazarene University, received 88 cadavers for education and research programs.
The cadavers that were sent to USC were not used in traditional educational and research programs. Contracts show that between Apr. 2024 and Dec. 2025, USC sent 23 of the 41 cadavers loaned by UCSD to the Israel Defense Forces for combat medic training hosted at USC.
In February, Annenberg Media reported that the Israeli combat medics who participated in the medical cadaver program appeared to belong to the IDF’s Golani Brigade, which the United Nations accused ambushing Palestinian medics and burying 15 of the dead in a mass grave in 2025.
For donor families like the Anandpuras, UCSD’s undisclosed ties to the Israeli and U.S. militaries betray the trust they placed in the university.
“To find out that educational institutions are not actually there to enrich young people’s lives and bring people closer to knowledge, that they are partnered with militaries that consistently violate human rights — the U.S. military and Israeli military — breaks our trust and faith,” Bhavika Anandpura said.
Bhavika’s sister, Shuchi, a UCSD graduate, feels the same.
“At that point, it didn’t feel like we were leaving her in the hands of a stranger,” she said. “To be reassured that he would love her like family made it seem like, obviously, he was going to treat her the way we treated her. We loved her. I’m appalled he said that when over 50 percent of their donations were going to the military.”
UC stands by cadaver program — Stops sending bodies to USC
In April, after student journalists revealed UCSD supplied cadavers to the Israeli military, UC Health added a section to its body donation website stating it does not distinguish military training from “supporting education, medical and clinical training, and research.”
In a statement to Times of San Diego, UC Health defended UCSD's Body Donation Program and its military partnerships.
“UC is proud of its support for medical education of U.S. military healthcare professionals,” UC Health spokesperson Heather Harper wrote on Oct. 7. “The training of military healthcare professionals through lending of anatomical remains for practical skill building — as well as through residency programs and other partnerships — helps develop skilled healthcare professionals who frequently go on to practice in civilian settings supporting the health of communities in California and across the nation.”
Dr. Morgen A. Chalmiers, a medical anthropologist who graduated from UCSD’s School of Medicine, objected to her university supplying bodies to the U.S. and Israeli militaries, calling the practice “a very extreme misuse and disrespect” of donors’ bodies.
“There's a horrific irony that these people gave their bodies to teach future healthcare workers to become better healers and caregivers,” Chalmiers said. “[But] then their bodies were subjected to this crude sort of reanimation and mutilation on a make-believe battlefield, for the very same unit bombing ambulances and shooting paramedics at point-blank range in Gaza."
In September, USC announced it would not renew its cadaver contract with the military.
Following the announcement, UCSD said it would no longer supply cadavers to USC because changes to USC's laboratory no longer met UC requirements.
Niranjana’s final gift
Before UCSD employees came to collect Niranjana Anandpura’s body, her family cut a lock of her hair. After 13 days of prayer, a priest burned it as a symbolic substitute for her body in a Hindu funeral rite, marking the end of formal mourning.
Now, the lock of hair holds new significance for the family: it was the only part of their beloved grandmother that the military couldn’t use.
The Anandpura sisters feel “betrayed” by Barton, whose assurances that their grandmother’s body would be used for a good cause convinced the family to donate.
“We felt reassured that, even though we wouldn’t get the ashes back, [my grandmother] would be taken care of with love,” Bhavika Anandpura said. “We’re missing out on the last rites, doing all of the prayers that are necessary at that time, but that’s the cost of doing the donation. It was a big concern for us, until the director reassured us that it would be okay. We feel that was unfair for him to do.”
Shuchi Anandpura said Barton made their grandmother’s South Asian heritage “a big selling point” in multiple conversations that convinced the family to donate. The director told the Anandpuras that UCSD rarely receives South Asian body donations, making the matriarch’s contribution — and her family’s sacrifice — especially valuable.
But the sisters say their grandmother’s South Asian heritage is exactly why they consider the program’s undisclosed ties to the military such a personal “betrayal” because, as an Indian woman who grew up under British colonial rule, their grandmother was deeply opposed to war.
Niranjana Anandpura’s family still doesn’t know whether her body was used for military training — an uncertainty that continues to haunt them.
Now, her granddaughters want UCSD to account for all donated bodies by telling every family how their loved one’s remains were used, including ways not disclosed in the university’s body donation contract.
“I would like an answer for all bodies, not just my grandma, [but] for all unwilling participants,” Shuchi Anandpura said. “UCSD should be able to take accountability for each and every body. I would like them to tell donors exactly how much they made. I think it’s important for each family to know.”
