The bodies that Americans donated to science may have ended up on steel tables, pumped with artificial blood, so Israeli military surgeons could rehearse battlefield wounds.

A University of Southern California programme sold donated cadavers to the US Navy for a combat surgery course attended by Israeli forward surgical teams, according to student journalists, federal contract records, and a peer-reviewed 2020 medical paper.

AnAl Jazeera documentarypublished on 2 June 2026 carried the allegations to a global audience and reignited anger among grieving families who say nobody warned them. USC and the University of California, San Diego both reject the claim that they operated a 'military' programme.

The story began with student reporters at USC's Annenberg Media, who traced the trade through public contracts inan October 2025 investigation. Since 2017, the US Navy has paid USC more than £639,000 ($860,000) for at least 89 cadavers, and 32 of those bodies were used for an Israeli military trauma course at Los Angeles General Medical Center,Fox 11 Los Angeles reported.

The training itself is not new. The Navy Trauma Training Center at the hospital dates to 2002, and Israeli surgical teams began rotating through as early as 2013, with contracts naming Israeli personnel from 2017 onward.

A four-day 'combat trauma surgery skills course' for 'forward surgical teams' is set out ina 2020 paperco-written by Navy and USC Keck instructors and indexed on the National Library of Medicine's database.

The 2020 paper describes a technique that has unsettled many readers. Instructors used a perfused fresh human cadaver model, pumping fluid through the vascular system so the dead tissue would bleed like a living casualty. Trainees practised on gunshot wounds to the chest and legs, alongside blast injuries to the face and torso caused by improvised explosive devices.

“It’s horrifying.”This doctor is speaking out after it was revealed that bodies donated for science to his university were used to train Israeli military medics in Los Angeles.pic.twitter.com/9AESqObTcf

Several trauma surgeons told Al Jazeera that perfused cadavers are reserved for highly specialised work and seldom appear in ordinary courses. The consent question cuts deeper still. Donors hand over their bodies for medical training and research, yet the programmes do not tell families that a foreign army might train on the remains, and the donor paperwork reviewed by reporters made no mention of it.

Israeli military surgeons have been training on corpses donated by US citizens without the consent of the deceased.The University of Southern California (USC) sells donated bodies to the US Navy and since 2018 it has provided at least 32 cadavers to an Israeli military surgical…pic.twitter.com/JkD3FYGgvw

Source: International Business Times UK