The examiner's actions raise serious questions about prisoners' rights and the limits of medical research. Existing laws provide unsatisfactory means for dealing with the problem of experimentation on prisoners' remains. Laws pertinent to organ donation, consent to treatment, experimentation on human subjects, autopsies, and penal sanctions are inadequate. Such laws either do not address or fail to justify experimentation on dead inmates. Organ donation laws fail to provide adequate safeguards to ensure voluntary consent of inmates. Laws governing consent to treatment and experimentation apply only to live inmates. Autopsy laws were never intended to apply to nonforensic experimentation and fail to provide safeguards to ensure voluntary consent. Theories of punishment aside, penal sanctions cannot justify experimentation on inmates' remains without violating prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment and guarantees of due process and equal protection. Federal and State legislatures should promulgate laws or guidelines to address comprehensively this issue. Ad hoc application of existing laws will lead only to further confusion and perpetuate violations of the rights of prisoners and their families. 156 references.