Victor Ambros at UMass Chan Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Mass. General and Harvard Medical School woke up this morning to learn they'd been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery of microRNA: Read more.
A Suffolk Superior Court judge today dismissed Harvard and two of its managers from lawsuits by family members of people whose deceased relatives' body parts may have been sold for five years on a black market to macabre collectors across the country - sometimes after unofficial open houses at the medical school campus. Read more.
The family of a woman who willed her body to Harvard Medical School before she died in 2021 is the latest to sue Harvard and former medical-school morgue director after learning that he might have sold off parts of her body to people who collect such things. Read more.
The children of Margaret Flanagan of Saugus, who died of cancer in 2018, yesterday sued Harvard Medical School and former mortuary director Cedric Lodge for what may have happened to her body parts after she willed her body to the school and then died. Read more.
The Crimson reports Harvard will rename its medical school for the first person to give it $1 billion - although the money would have to come with no restrictions.
In contrast, Harvard renamed its public-health school after somebody for just $400 million.
FBI agents investigating the sale of body parts from the Harvard Medical School went to William Nott's Mt. Washington, KY apartment to look for human remains, but arrested him because of all the guns, gun parts and ammunition they also found - which they say Nott wasn't supposed to have since he'd already been convicted for assembling a collection of parts to make pipe bombs, court documents say. Read more.
Ed. note: Amount sought changed after the court docket was changed.
A man whose mother agreed to have her body donated to Harvard Medical School in 2017 today sued both Harvard and now former mortuary director Cedric Lodge for $5 million for the way Lodge allegedly ran the school mortuary as a body-parts bazaar until his arrest earlier this year. Read more.
From the complaint: Lodge and his Grim Reaper license plate.
If nothing else, Anne Weiss argues, the license plate on Cedric Lodge's car should have made officials at Harvard Medical School suspicious what their mortuary director was up to all those years. But they weren't, Weiss claims, and so they're as much to blame for the grief that has fallen over her and other people whose relatives willed their bodies to medical research - only to learn last month that Lodge was busy selling off brains, faces and other body parts to a ghoulish ring of collectors. Read more.
Four New Hampshire residents who say their father willed his body to Harvard Medical School yesterday sued Harvard and former mortuary director Cedric Lodge for the way Lodge may have removed parts from their father's body to sell to one or more macabre collectors - at least some right at the school mortuary, whose doors he allegedly opened to them. Read more.
The families of three Massachusetts residents who willed their bodies to Harvard Medical School yesterday sued Harvard over what might have happened to those bodies under the care of a school mortuary director now facing federal charges of selling off various body parts to a ring of creepy collectors. Read more.
The son of a Saugus woman who willed her body to Harvard Medical School in 2019 today sued Harvard University and its former medical-school morgue director - who now faces federal criminal charges that he ran the morgue as a supermarket for people who liked to collect brains, heads, faces, hearts and other parts from bodies that were only supposed to be used for medical education and research. Read more.
Kat and some of her creepy creations.
The mortuary manager at Harvard Medical School and his wife, along with the owner of Kat's Creepy Creations in Peabody and a Pennsylvania man were indicted yesterday on charges they ran a ring that stole and sold parts from bodies donated to the school for use by doctors in training - with at least some skin getting tanned into leather. Read more.
Handmaid watched some baby-goat yoga in the yard at Harvard Medical School today.
Actor William Hurt died today at 71.
In 1980, in his first film role, he starred in Ken Russell's "Altered States," playing a researcher who tampers with the fundamental forces of nature, in the basement of Harvard Medical School. According to Movie-Locations.com, he and his wife (played by Blair Brown) lived at 108 Myrtle St. on Beacon Hill, and returned from a trip to Mexico via Logan Airport.
Deans at Harvard's medical and dental schools told students today that due to Covid-19, the fall semester for incoming students will start with only online classes - a couple weeks after a Harvard University official said that the main Harvard campus would be open to students in September. Read more.
Police shutting down Longwood Medical Area on Huntington Avenue side. Photo by Wepainttheworld.
A report of gunfire around 2:40 p.m. sent Simmons University students and staff rushing into locked classrooms and even closets as Boston and Simmons police rushed to the campus to look for the "active shooter" that Simmons sent out an alert about. Read more.
Roving UHub photographer Matt Colvin noticed people enjoying the warm weather today on the lawn at Harvard Medical School.
Meanwhile, JP Licks in Jamaica Plain got pretty crowded: Read more.
The Crimson reports the medical school hopes to sell 8 of the 11 floors in a building it owns at 4 Blackfan Circle in the Longwood Medical Area. The money will help reduce the school's debt and, if enough comes in, let it stop drawing down its endowment to pay for operations.
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