Use of Cadaver Slipped By Official

The brochure was explicit, advertising a private anatomy class including “training and study with a FULL HUMAN CADAVER.”

But Richard Robertson, chairman of UC Irvine’s anatomy and neurobiology department, says he can’t remember if he noticed the word “cadaver” when higher-ups asked him to review the brochure in late August or early September last year. If he did, Robertson said, he didn’t think to ask how a private venture might procure a cadaver. Nor did he wonder where such an anatomy class might be held.

Instead, his eyes fixed on the phrases saying the private class was co-sponsored by the anatomy department at UC Irvine’s College of Medicine.

“When the brochure was brought to my attention, what captured my attention were the two references to this department,” Robertson said Monday. “The other aspects of the flier didn’t register with me. Even now, if [a reference to a cadaver] was there, I missed it.”

The tale of the brochure highlights opportunities UCI officials missed to catch a scandal early.

The private anatomy class is now one focus of a district attorney’s investigation into misdeeds allegedly committed under the watch of the now-dismissed director of UC Irvine’s Willed Body Program. The class was conducted in the program’s laboratory on campus for four weeks in summer 1998 using cadavers donated to the university without UCI’s permission, administrators acknowledge. The university can find no record of compensation for use of its property or cadavers.

UCI officials have said they first learned of the class in June 1999, prompting expansion of an internal investigation into other irregularities in the program.

But a letter on UCI stationery dated Sept. 1, 1998, shows that former program director Christopher S. Brown discussed the class with Robertson, his supervisor, more than nine months earlier.

The letter is from Brown to Jeffrey Frazier, a former business associate who owned a tutoring company called Replica Notes that provided the anatomy classes. In it, Brown tells Frazier that Robertson would not allow Replica to advertise a connection to UCI.

Crossed out on the accompanying brochure were passages referring to a partnership with the medical school’s anatomy department and the promise of letters of recommendation from that department for students who did well in the class. “Please submit these changes to me prior to continuing your program,” Brown wrote.

The brochure makes no reference to where the cadaver came from or where the class would be held. But to Brown’s lawyer, the letter contains tacit permission for the anatomy class to continue. Brown has previously said through his lawyer that he did not profit from the private class and that he never did anything without going through university channels.

“Based on what I’ve seen, [the letter] shows that [Robertson] knew about it, he approved it and he had meetings about it,” said the lawyer, Stephen Warren Solomon. “That’s my opinion.”

Robertson said he recalls the discussion referred to in Brown’s letter but points out it came after the 1998 class was held. There are no records of the anatomy labs continuing after summer 1998.

“I had no advance knowledge [of the lab], and I gave no approval for that . . . course,” Robertson said. “When I saw the flier, I believe I saw it after the course was actually offered.”

The university might not have noticed the class at all had a student not complained about it. Robertson said the complaint was the university’s first inkling about the private anatomy class.

Robertson cited that complaint as the reason UCI officials asked him in late summer 1998 to investigate the brochure’s purported connection to UCI. Robertson said that in addition to talking to Brown about the class, he contacted Replica Notes himself about the brochure, leaving a voicemail message warning the company not to advertise a connection with UCI.

Times staff writer Peter M. Warren contributed to this report.