Officials at three offshore medical schools are giving assurances that the human cadavers they received last year from Kansas University were used for ethical purposes, even though they were transported there by a controversial middleman.

KU began a review of its willed-body program last month after reports surfaced that a New York-based middleman used by the school had shipped bodies from Tulane University to the Army to be blown up in a land-mine experiment.

In 2003, KU sold 60 of its excess cadavers to the same company, National Anatomical Service, with the understanding they’d be used for medical research at three schools that needed bodies: St. George’s University in Grenada, American University of the Caribbean in St. Maarten, and Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica.

Now, all three schools have given assurances, either in writing to KU or in interviews, that the bodies they got from KU were used in accordance with donors’ wishes.

“We don’t traffic in cadavers. We simply try to obtain a sufficient number for our medical students, and that’s it,” said Sheryl Moody, vice president and general counsel of Ross University School of Medicine. “We don’t sell or anything.”

Officials at the other two schools sent e-mails to Dale Abrahamson, chairman of anatomy and cell biology at the KU Medical Center, with similar assurances.

“(T)here is no banter nor horseplay about the cadaver, and sensitive areas of the bodies are kept covered when not the direct object of study,” wrote Gene Colborn, chairman of anatomical sciences at American University of the Caribbean. “At the end of the course each semester, the bodies are prepared carefully for return to National Anatomical Services for cremation.”

KU officials said they had no reason to believe bodies donated to KU had ever been used improperly, but they said they made an effort to contact the schools as an extra precaution.

“In a sense, it’s chasing after something we’re pretty sure isn’t there,” said Dennis McCulloch, a Med Center spokesman.

Cadaver sales became a hot topic last month when police arrested the director of UCLA’s willed-body program on suspicion of illegally selling body parts.

Trading in body parts can be profitable because there’s a high demand for uses including transplants.

But KU officials say that because the bodies they send to other schools are embalmed, they’re not useful for much other than dissection and medical research.