For years, my mother said she wanted her body donated to science, and I always tried to talk her out of it because the thought of med students dissecting her like she was a piece of meat deeply upset me. Her argument was 1) she’d be gone anyway; 2) at least some good use would be made of her body and teach people things before she started to decay. I tried not to think about it.
Shortly before she passed away, we met with a hospice social worker, and when we told him she wanted her body donated to science, he said she needed to have made arrangements with a teaching hospital months in advance. She hadn’t done anything of the sort – she had just talked about it. Suddenly, making sure my mother had her one dying wish (literally) fulfilled became incredibly important. Speaking for myself, any qualms I may have had paled in comparison to my fear that she wouldn’t have her body handled the way she wanted. Her brother ended up going in person to Harvard Medical School (she lived in Boston) and persuading them to accept her body on short notice. I don’t know how he accomplished that, but that is what happened. (Her desire was to donate her body to Mass General, where she had been a patient, but since she never looked into making arrangements, she never learned that Mass General does not accept bodies.)
It ended up being free for us because (if I have the details right – I wasn’t the one who took care of this) the state provides a voucher for the transport of a body to a funeral home after death and then the hospital retrieves the body from the funeral home, and this voucher is pretty much 1:1 for what the funeral home would charge us directly.
About a month after she died, we got a letter from Harvard Medical School thanking us for her donation (it was phrased more tactfully than that), and it gave us an option as to what to do with her body after it was used. IIRC, the options were: 1) you can have them deliver the body to you in a casket so that you can make your own arrangements for burial [there was a chilling caveat to the effect of “please note that the remains will not be in condition for viewing”]; 2) you can have them cremate the body and bury the ashes in their own local cemetery; or 3) you can have them cremate the body and have them send the ashes to you. We chose option 3. The letter also said that they would send us any medical findings made from her body within 2 years. She died in late November and we still haven’t received the ashes but I am under the impression that that too may take up to 2 years.
If anybody reading this is interested in donating their body to science, make the arrangements now while you’re still in good enough health to sign all the necessary documents.
I wanted to do it myself but my ex went ballistic, also she also wouldn’t let me buy a motorbike because she thought that I’d get myself killed in a short time.
But thanks for reminding me, I think that I’ll volunteer my body for science now that its mine again as it were.
May I recommend the excellent book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach to learn all sorts of interesting things about cadavers donated to science. Your partner’s misgivings might be allayed by reading this book.
Please don’t bury me Down in that cold cold ground No, I’d druther have “em” cut me up And pass me all around Throw my brain in a hurricane And the blind can have my eyes And the deaf can take both of my ears If they don’t mind the size
Give my feet to the footloose Careless, fancy free Give my knees to the needy Don’t pull that stuff on me Hand me down my walking cane It’s a sin to tell a lie Send my mouth way down south And kiss my ass goodbye
I’m having oral surgery next month that will require human “bone dust” to be used so that my jaw bone regenerates, allowing the prosthetic tooth I’ll have inserted to be secure. It’s a very minor thing compared to having actual life-saving organs implanted, but it wouldn’t be possible had someone like you not been willing to allow their remains to be used for testing scientific techniques. So thank you.
(P.S. If I die disease free and am therefore a qualified donor, I want everything that can be used, used, and the rest cremated and eventually mixed into a reef ball with my husband’s cremains and those of our cats, so we can all “be together” doing something good for the environment. Thank goodness my husband is agreeable because my father and sisters, should they outlive me, would never, ever abide by my wishes. Make a very explicit will!)
