People contemplating giving their bodies to science can be forgiven second thoughts. That's unfortunate. Medical school students need cadavers, and their future patients need them to have had that training. But the mess coming out of the UCLA willed-body program could well cool the dedication of bodies to science.

UCLA's program has been suspended indefinitely, and permanent closure is possible. The man in charge of the program has been arrested on suspicion of grand theft – the illegal sale of allegedly hundreds of cadavers. His alleged accomplice has been arrested on suspicion of receiving and reselling stolen "goods." Details await further investigation, but what is known so far is no comfort either to the relatives of the body donors or to UCLA officials.

Henry G. Reid, the program's former director, is reported to have lied about his academic credentials and to have been repeatedly in financial straits – two strikes against him the university could have discovered even before Reid was hired, and certainly afterward. No alarms seem to have gone off a couple of years ago when relatives of donors sued UCLA for claimed mishandling of cadavers, including dumping them in a landfill.

This scandal is not, as one bioethicist noted, the novel "Coma" come true, with organs harvested for sale on the black market. But it doesn't have to rank with science fiction to be awful, off-putting to prospective donors and a real shame (never mind the lawsuits) on the university.

The auditor of the university system has asked for audits of all its med schools' willed-body programs, and officials promise more vigilance. It should start with a thorough investigation of the people hired to run them – barely beginning with a check of their academic claims – and a very long look at everyone hired to oversee them.