You know how when there’s a natural (or unnatural) disaster and Americans show up in droves to give blood? And later the media says that most of that blood will go to waste, because supply and demand, and donor blood has a shelf life, and yada yada yada.
Is the same true of donating one’s body to science? Do medical schools, pathology labs, and whomever else needs them have just the right amount of donor cadavers? Too many? Too few?
I plan to donate my body to science when I die. That is, unless I’m just contributing to a scientific trash problem.
Well, if you don’t care about the ultimate disposal of your remains, and you are worried that your cadaver isn’t prime material for an anatomy class, I understand that there is a huge demand by medical schools, and other such institutions, for genuine human skeletons-- casts leave a lot to be desired, is what I hear, and even people who are willing to be anatomy subjects want eventual disposal of their remains, even if it’s their family tossing their ashes someplace meaningful to them.
If it doesn’t trouble you to be an articulated skeleton on display, you could look into that. It’s definitely a way of being very useful after death.
I have no idea, and you could ask local schools. I suspect they would be touched and grateful for your munificence. Learning anatomy, much less surgery, is not easy and computer facsimiles only help with the former.
Donating your body to science sounds noble, but it may not work out that way. In the U.S., transplants are regulated by the National Organ Transplant Act, but other purposes aren’t. For example:
A few of the other purposes can be found in the book below, which has gotten good reviews from anatomists.
The first chapter visits a practice session for surgeons wanting to update their skills on face lifts. Since they don’t need the parts of the body from the neck down . . .
I didn’t follow your links (so perhaps it’s mentioned) but one of the first cases of cadaver abuse that received attention was the case of the commentator Alastair Cooke when some of his bones were stolen prior to cremation.
Not having to pay any mortuary costs is a pretty substantial compensation. My step-father passed away a few months ago and was donated to science. They picked him up from the nursing home and my mom received his cremains about a month later. She paid nothing. I wish I could have gotten the same deal for my cat.
From discussions I’ve read, regular normal dead guys may not be wanted as they are in plentiful supply. If you have an interesting and rare pathology, whether it killed you or not, then you may be more attractive.
I expect the waivers / contract you would sign would give the university or institution absolute right to refuse to collect you or to return you unopened as they saw fit. Science has learned to make dead folk go a long way. Even the body farms might only need a handful of corpses, and then hang on to them for years. Surgeons train on animal analogues, but ethical concerns are encouraging use of virtual reality more.
I wonder whether you could arrange beforehand with a med school. Where my DIL went they used bodies for anatomy for a year, then buried or cremated them and held a memorial service that she felt was quite moving.
This is one of my favorite books! Mary Roach has also written some other very entertaining books about things we would rather not think about, and “Packing for Mars”, which is about space travel, convinced me that unless we find a way to circumvent the speed of light, we will never have interplanetary, let alone interstellar, travel.
How do you think doctors and dentists learn to do new surgical procedures, anyway? Mannequins are OK, but there’s no substitute for The Real Thing.
Before donating your body to a particular facility, make sure they can use it. Sometimes they can’t.
Better do it soon. Some predict that use of cadavers in medical school education could be obsolete within a decade (running a cadaver lab is expensive, and virtual anatomy education is catching on in some places). I suspect that med student education would not be compromised by phasing out use of cadavers in gross anatomy teaching, though there are objections.*
There are some non-med school uses for donated bodies. As described in “Stiff”, for example, heads were used for practicing plastic surgery technique. And there are research applications as well.
*One journal article cites the supposed harm caused by young surgeons operating without experience on cadavers. I find this objection silly, given the distinct differences between dissecting cadavers and living humans, not to mention that by the time one is in surgical residency, it’s likely that 99% of one’s gross anatomy teaching is long forgotten.
Surgeons gradually increase their skills under supervision. This could be done without cadavers. Just not as well or quickly. The amount of anatomy a surgeon knows might depend on their specialty but they know a remarkable amount of anatomy and much more than a mere few percent of med school teachings.
If nothing else, real cadavers are useful for gross anatomy. As in, the common use of the word “gross”. Most humans have an instinctual aversion to sticking their hands in human bodies and poking around inside of them. If someone’s to become a surgeon, you need to break them of that instinctual aversion somehow.
My late father donated his body to the University of Kansas Medical School. And my mother has signed papers to do the same when she passes.
A few months after Dad died, KU Med had a luncheon/program for the families of the donors. It was a tribute to the deceased and was both moving and uplifting.
We received Dad’s ashes about a year after he passed. The only expense we incurred was payment to the funeral home for transportation of his body to the school.
Sure, surgeons are well-versed in anatomy, but the knowledge required for their specialty is not acquired while laboring over a preserved cadaver in 1st-year gross anatomy class.
If you quizzed medical students even 6 months after memorizing (for instance) voluminous detail about the origin, insertion and action of every muscle in the body and the minutiae of vasculature, they’d almost certainly flunk badly. What they really need to retain is acquired later on.
I’ll agree with that. They relearn what they once knew, then maybe more. I went to a “surgical school”, am no surgeon, and had to take a 800 hours of neuroanatomy. I’m still not sure why.
I have a cousin who is an orthopedic surgeon. She knows every bone, tendon and ligament in the body, and what they do. But she says, don’t ask her to dissect a brain, or perform abdominal surgery, or even deliver a baby if there are any complications whatsoever.
Her point when she said it was how specialized the branches of medicine are now.