US university sells dead bodies to navy for Israeli military training

The AJ+ series Direct From investigates the connection between bodies donated to US universities and training programmes for Israeli military teams.

Los Angeles, California – Medical case manager Miriam Volpin was at work in Nevada when she received a disturbing message from a student journalist at the University of Southern California (USC).

That student, Jennifer Nehrer, was part of a team investigating allegations that bodies donated to the school for education and scientific research were being sold to the United States Armed Forces. Some may even have ended up in the hands of Israeli military surgeons.

Her 101-year-old mother, Jeanette, had died in 2021. A former flight nurse who served in World War II, Jeanette had arranged to donate her body to USC.

Volpin now fears her mother's body was among those used to train surgical teams for conflicts like Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

The AJ+ documentary series Direct From caught up with Volpin and other family members who wonder whether the remains of their loved ones were used to provide training for military personnel.

Direct From also met with the student journalists who broke the story in 2025, to take their investigation further.

Their reporting revealed that USC was one of two schools in southern California that provided cadavers to the US Navy for Israeli surgical teams.

Records show that, since 2018, USC has supplied at least 89 fresh cadavers as part of agreements involving training for both the US Navy and Israeli military personnel.

Public information about the Israeli training is limited. But a 2020 medical paper written by USC and US Navy instructors offers a rare glimpse inside the process.

The paper describes a four-day “combat trauma surgery skills course” offered to “forward surgical teams” in the Israeli military — units that operate close to the front lines.

During the training, the donated bodies were “reanimated” using a method called perfusion.

That process involves pumping fake blood through the body to make the cadavers as lifelike as possible, mimicking the active bleeding of wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

The paper details participants' training on simulated combat injuries, including gunshot wounds to the chest and legs, and blasts to the face and torso from improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The US Navy, meanwhile, told AJ+ that the simulated injuries were produced using "surgical" techniques.

“During this training, experienced Trauma Surgeons recreate complex injury patterns with surgical tools to deliver a high-fidelity, hyper-realistic training envir