Harvard Medical School has agreed to pay $53 million to settle class action lawsuits filed by relatives of body donors whose remains were sold on the black market by the school's former morgue manager, Cedric Lodge.

Deans George Q. Daley and Bernard S. Chang announced the development in a letter to the community on Tuesday, describing Lodge's actions as "despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community." Pending court approval, Harvard said two class action settlement funds totaling $53 million will be established to resolve the lawsuits. A Harvard Medical School spokesperson, when asked for comment on Thursday, referred to the letter and said the school had no additional information to share.

The lawsuits were brought by 47 relatives of people whose remains were potentially mishandled and sold after being donated for research and education. Harvard has said it cannot determine precisely which donors' remains Lodge stole. After he was charged in 2023, the school reviewed information from federal investigators along with records showing when donors' remains were sent for cremation and when Lodge was on campus, in order to determine which donors may have been affected.

The settlement covers relatives or designees of people who donated their remains to Harvard Medical School between Jan. 1, 2018, and March 31, 2023.

Last year, Lodge was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts "as if they were baubles." Lodge had worked at Harvard since 1995, managing the morgue at the school's Anatomical Gift Program, and federal prosecutors charged him in June 2023 in Pennsylvania with interstate transportation of stolen goods. Authorities said Lodge was at the center of a ghoulish scheme in which he shipped brains, skin, hands, and faces from cadavers to buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. His wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to just over a year in prison for assisting him. Six other people who bought remains from Cedric Lodge also pleaded guilty and have been sentenced, according to Harvard.

In one case, Cedric Lodge provided skin to a buyer so that it could be tanned into leather and bound into a book, a "deeply horrifying reality," Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin said in a court filing.

After Harvard finishes using a donated body for research or teaching, the body is typically returned to the family or cremated. Lodge acknowledged removing body parts before cremation, and Harvard has said he acted without the school's knowledge or permission.

Whole-body donations like those at issue here are central to anatomy education and surgical training at medical schools, and the case has drawn attention to how such programs are overseen. Unlike organs recovered for transplant, which fall under federal regulation, whole-body donation for research and education is governed largely by a patchwork of state rules, and the Lodge prosecution is one of several in recent years to expose trafficking in human remains.

In their letter, Daley and Chang said Lodge's actions "do not reflect the reverence we hold for the altruistic individuals who selflessly donate their bodies" to the school's Anatomical Gift Program. "We reaffirm our deep sorrow and empathy for the families of donors who may have been impacted," they said.

In addition to the payments, Harvard Medical School agreed to provide families with a statement condemning Lodge's actions and summarizing improvements made to the Anatomical Gift Program. The school also plans to establish an annual financial aid scholarship for medical students beginning in the 2027-28 academic year to honor anatomical donors.

Harvard said it has enacted recommendations from a panel of outside experts appointed in 2023 to review the program after Lodge was charged. Before any money is paid out, a judge must approve the deal, and families in the settlement class will have the opportunity to raise objections as part of that process.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.