Scandal pulls UCLA into international spotlight
By Dmitri Pikman
March 21, 2004 9:00 p.m.
In recent weeks, UCLA has been getting a lot of coverage in the
international press, but not the kind of publicity the school
desires.
The story of two UCLA medical center employees arrested in
connection with the illegal sale of cadavers donated to the UCLA
Willed Body Program has been covered by everyone from CNN and
Reuters to Yahoo! Asia News.
It has received coverage around the world, which should come as
no surprise, says Steve Rendall, senior analyst at Fairness and
Accuracy In Reporting, a national media watch group.
“This story seems morbid and has a sense of grim,
compelling gossip to it. Not to diminish it, but it has a lot of
tabloid potential,” Rendall said.
For the most part, university and college-oriented stories do
not receive much play in the international press. The Willed Body
Program at UCLA, however, has something most university news
stories do not: a hint of a scandal.
“I don’t know the last time I saw anything about a
university being covered heavily, unless it is some sort of a
morbid campus story,” Rendall said.
The Willed Body Program at the UCLA David Geffen School of
Medicine manages cadavers donated to the school for educational
purposes.
The program received massive media coverage earlier this month
when police arrested two men accused of selling parts of donated
cadavers for profit. Henry Reid, one of the two arrested, is the
director of the program.
In recent years the only UCLA-related story that has come close
to the amount of international coverage received by the Willed Body
Program was the successful separation of conjoined Guatemalan
twins, performed at the medical center in August 2002.
The nearly 22-hour separation surgery of Maria Teresa and her
sister, Maria de Jesus, was successfully completed, and the
twins’ recovery created a media blitz all over the globe.
Their story has been covered by such media giants as the BBC and
CNBC, while also getting press in other country’s newspapers,
such as “The Tribune” in India.
Rendall said the two stories, both of which involved the medical
center, are of interest for different reasons.
“The conjoined twins story is driven by a much more human
interest angle. The sale of cadavers is much more gossip
material,” Rendall said.
It is also true that the Willed Body Program story has been
receiving diminished coverage as time goes on, though the twins
were still big news months after the surgery.
“You got to watch a human drama unfold,” Rendall
said, referring to the twins’ recovery.
While continuing press on the twins story was highly beneficial
for UCLA, the coverage of the Willed Body Program is not.
“Any bad publicity about the use of willed bodies
potentially discourages prospective donors,” said Thomas
Moore, president of the American Association of International
Medical Graduates, a nonprofit information source for U.S. citizens
applying to international schools.
In the wake of the scandal, some newspaper articles speculated
that the negative coverage by the foreign press might detract from
the willingness of international students to attend UCLA.
But April Morrow, admissions coordinator at the American
Association of Medical Colleges, a nonprofit organization that
advocates for reform in medical education, said international
students looking into medical schools in the United States would
not be too influenced by the recent events.
Robin Williamson, a communications professor at Saint Thomas
University in Houston, also said international students will not be
impacted by the recent stories.
“The way it has been covered internationally is more of a
dismissive gesture than an actual criticism of the school.
“˜Here are the Americans again being sloppy,’ that sort
of thing,” Williamson said.
She added that UCLA should be worried more about national press
coverage, since that is where most of the criticism comes from.
“I think with stories like these, much will depend on the
slant of the story and how many more stories of that type are out
there right now,” Williamson said, referring to stories
dealing with the Willed Body Program.
“The more we see of a story, the more we think it’s
important and agenda-setting.”
