In 2008, a thriving company named Science Care Inc developed a 55-page national expansion plan. The internal document projected the yield on raw material to the decimal point and earnings to the dollar.
The goal: to maximize profits from the sale of human bodies donated to science. The company’s model for ensuring quality: McDonald’s Corp.
Science Care founder Jim Rogers aimed to provide customers with the same cuts from cadavers no matter which Science Care branch handled the order. That’s why he cited production methods perfected by Ray Kroc, the visionary who turned a hamburger stand into a fast-food empire, said an executive who worked closely with Rogers.
“He used the McDonald’s analogy that no matter where you go, you get the same exact thing,” the executive, former quality assurance director John Cover, said in a 2009 sworn statement.
“It was all about quality,” Cover said in a recent interview. “When you get a Big Mac, it’s going to taste like a Big Mac, whether you’re in Louisiana or San Francisco.”
McDonald’s and Kroc got rich selling hamburgers. Science Care and Rogers have made millions from human body parts.
From 2012 through 2014, Rogers and his co-owner, wife Josie, parlayed the donated dead into at least $12.5 million in earnings, according to Internal Revenue Service audits and court documents reviewed by Reuters.
The two likely earned millions more from Science Care in the dozen years before and after that period. And in 2016, they sold Science Care to a billion-dollar private equity firm. Terms were not disclosed, but the sale included this unusual asset: written pledges from more than 100,000 people to donate their bodies to Science Care when they die.
Last year, Jim and Josie Rogers bought a custom-built airplane and two luxury homes near Phoenix. They also own property in Hawaii and near a ski resort outside Telluride, Colorado.
Jim Rogers, 49, declined interview requests. In a statement to Reuters, he said he sold Science Care to spend more time with his family. The company bills itself as the “world’s leading whole-body donation program,” and Rogers credits Science Care with bringing reliability to the industry.
