I Just Found Out About Full Body Donation

Factual Questions
1

I won’t mention the organization because I don’t want to be accused of “spamming” them. (Anyone else get the humor of that?)

Preliminarily, one just reads up on what’s required on their site and then calls to speak with someone and asks for a registry card which they send in an e-mail.

To proceed, have any of you done this? What do think of your decision? How was it received by your family?

As for me, I don’t think it’s ALL altruism, but I have worked in the medical field, so maybe this is appropriate.

In case my wife survives me, I don’t want to leave a financial burden and even the cheapest cremation is (last time I checked) $695.00.

Plus, funerals , IMO, are so overrated.

Any comments?

2

I think it’s a great idea. Do have a backup plan in case your body can’t be used for whatever reason.

3

It’s what I would like to do, but my mother would be completely opposed, so I’m waiting until she’s no longer around to make the arrangements.

One of the key restrictions is for weight. Most programs do not accept donors over a certain weight. I’m looking at UCSF now, and they restrict to under 250 pounds.

Other restrictions: Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, hepatitis, HIV, tuberculosis, extensive trauma at the time of death or advanced decomposition.

Don’t plan to jump off a tall building and then donate your body.

4

Backup plan=a ditch in Coyote country.

5

Agreed. Not only that, why would my body need to have its own special place that is no longer available for use by the living?

Not only that, all the chemicals of embalming and exposure of such chemicals to funeral workers, then putting that in the ground – why? As for cremation, the toxic emissions (I have no amalgam fillings) and carbon release is hazardous for the living and the environment.

I’ve considered having my body donated to science, including the Body Farm for forensic science. After seeing the Body Worlds exhibit, I thought it would be cool to have my remains educate and inspire others. I also like the idea of the burial pods that feed young trees. I would love to feed a Sequoia. A burial at sea would be cool if they just wrap my whole body up in a biodegradable sheet so I can feed marine life; no cremation first.

Suffice it to say, if my loved ones decide to embalm and inter my body in a box in a hole in the ground, I’m going to do my very best to come back and haunt them everyday for the rest of their lives. :wink:

6

You do not have to be embalmed unless your body is going to be transported on a plane or train.

Jewish bodies may NOT be embalmed, and in fact, must be prepared and placed in the coffin (which can’t be of finished wood or have and metal fittings or nails) by other Jews. I’ve done this.

Some states my have some embalming rules, but if you register an objection, and make it clear in writing, and discuss it with a relative, and a clergyman if you have one, you can probably avoid it.

From what I understand, some people get embalmed against their wishes, because their relatives get approached by a funeral director who offers them a free embalming so a “funeral arts” student can practice, because they have to do so many to be graduated. Make it clear to your family that you don’t even want a “freebie,” because the issue isn’t money.

7

Great, I’m giving up the whole shebang too. I have a stipulation that everything that gets used has my name associated with it.
“Who donated that kidney?”
“It was Steve according to the paperwork”.
“Cool, look at the toe tag on that skeleton. Some dude named, Steve”.

8

Re: Back-Up Plan

Well, really it should be called an alternative to burial and was a “Fore-Plan”.

I was just gonna seek out someone to do the cremation ONLY then give the ashes to a close friend who would then mix them into some french-onion dip and serve me at my wake. But then I gave that some thought and decided I didn’t want to end up in a sewage treatment plant and chose the body donation instead.

That was just a joke, by the way. No offense mean to anyone and remember the first three letters in the word “funeral”. :slight_smile: All the best to all of us on our journey. At least it’ll be better than “Soylent Green”. :wink:

9

My 8th grade science teacher mentioned a few times about donating her body to science, I’m sure she was serious about it.

I always thought all the bells and whistles on coffins were kind of funny. I guess it’s nice to have a nice looking coffin for people to look at. But if family members don’t have the extra money, there’s no reason to spend thousands of extra dollars for something that people are only going to see for 20 minutes. And with that, I remember someone talking about stupid it is to pay extra money for things like a gasket around the edge, water tight seams, the two part lid being totally sealed when it’s closed. They went on to say (not that it really matters, I guess), if it’s ‘open to the elements’, the box can break down, moisture/dry cycles can work their way through it, worms can get it and the body can decompose somewhat quickly. OTOH, if the box is totally sealed, the body will lay there and rot…putrefy in it’s own muck for years.
The funeral homes upsell people on these sealed caskets, but it’s a lot of money for no real reason and it extends the process pointlessly.

Years later, I remember Nate on Six Feet Under thinking about this and saying that when he dies he wants to be put in a bag and tossed in the ground. Which, IIRC, is a thing, and for exactly the above reasons (look up Green/Natural Burial).

10

IIRC, Willie Nelson wants to be smoked.

I regret having given in to my propensity to joke, but I don’t take anything too seriously these days.

My one goal is to take the best care of my wife that I can following her stroke 18 months ago, and that I DO take seriously.

Since both our plans are to die penniless, I think that just about wraps this little deal up.

11

A brief clip of Caitlin Doughty of Ask a Mortician on donating your body to science…

12

this place is an option too. The founder is going to have his body there

13

If you want to go out in style try the approach of Hunter S. Thompson

14

Quasi, if you’re truly interested, there’s a huge medical school in your vicinity that will happily accept your mortal remains. You (or more accurately, your estate) does not get paid anything for this, but there’s no charge unless you want cremains returned to your family; that’s like $250.00. Most people just let the medical school dispose of the cremains, which they promise to do in a discreet and dignified manner.

A friend of mine made these arrangements, and when he passed the body went from the medical examiner’s office to Emory University. No muss, no fuss, and that was all there was to it. But you have to make arrangements ahead of time and you have to let your family know about it.

http://cellbio.emory.edu/research/body-donor-program.html

This would be a solution for people in the Atlanta area/North Georgia; there’s also the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, I bet they have something too. Other jurisdictions have similar institutions and I’m sure you can make other arrangements with them, wherever you are.

Hope this helps. This is probably what I’m going to do as well, I will have no use of this carcass when I am done with it, what’s left is really not good for parts or I’d be an organ donor, so might as well further someone’s development as a physician or other skilled medical professional.

15

I plan on donating my body to a medical school and my wife is aware of my wish, but it looks like I need to do some more advance planning.

Would it be wrong to have my health history tattooed somewhere like my armpit to give the future medical student a “cheat sheet”?

16

That can be arranged:
http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/facts/donations/Body.html

Body farm all the way! No spouse, no kids, no one to object.

17

The book Stiff is an entertaining review of body donation - including body farms. Apparently maggots devouring a corpse sound like rice krispies. Who knew?

Yeah, I strongly wanted to sign up to have my body dumped in the desert to be torn by coyotes and vultures. Bit of a hiccup, tho, when my research suggested that most of the farms don’t arrange for transportation. The med school are more accessible. Some offer free pick-up, and after they are done, they can provide some ashes your survivors can pretend were you.

Maybe when I’m on my last legs, my wife or kids can take me on one last “road trip”, and dump me by the side of the road near the desired body farm…

18

In 2013, my mom was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and we knew her time was short. We were discussing whether to bury her or cremate her, and then my sister-in-law brought up something that one of the hospice nurses had mentioned. The majority of Alzheimer’s research can only be done once the patient dies. She mentioned a company that would take my mom’s body, examine the brain, cremate everything they didn’t use, and return the ashes back to us.

I was absolutely 100% for this idea, and told my brothers. I wrote a very impassioned letter as to why we should do it, and they agreed.

As it was, it was nearly a month between my mom’s death and her funeral, and enough time passed that we could actually bury her ashes at the funeral.

In a nutshell, the reason why I thought this was an incredible thing was because it allowed me to achieve peace with my mom’s debilitating disease. She lived about 5 or 6 years with pretty much no memory. Interestingly enough, she was one of the happiest Alzheimer’s/dementia patients the nurses had ever seen. Many people with Alzheimer’s or dementia exhibit anger because they know they have lost something. My mom’s brain was so far gone that she was a happy little bird.

I finally came to the conclusion that, just perhaps, there was a researcher out there who was finishing medical school and an internship. Somebody else’s research was needing to be finished, and papers written. Finally, the researcher had read the papers, developed a hypothesis, designed an experiment, and needed to be able to study the brain of an 80-year old woman who never smoked, drank, and who had lived outside the United States for over 50 years.

And when the researcher was ready, my mom was ready, too.

So, I think whole-body donation is awesome. I’m planning on donating my carcass to a Body Farm.

19

How well this works unfortunately depends on what state you reside in.

When my parents lived in California, they both signed up to donate their bodies to the University of California. When Dad died (he was at home) my Mom called whoever else she had to call and then the University. She said they came in a timely manner and were very polite and respectful and understanding. The same was true when my aunt died. All in all about the best experience you could have under the circumstances.

So Mom decides to move to Illinois. Shortly after she gets here, I call to arrange to donate her body after she passes. I thought she could just donate to the University of Illinois School of Medicine, but no – in Illinois you have to donate to a clearing center who then allocates the cadavers to the various schools.

And the clearing center does not pick up – you have to arrange with a funeral home to transport the body. They did have a recommendation of a place to use that was about half the cost of the funeral home I contacted, but it was still pretty expensive. This was several years ago, but I think it ran about $1000. And of course you have to use some kind of official transport.

My husband and I have long thought that we might want to donate our bodies, but after my experience with my mother we’ve never bothered to set it up. I think we’re both hoping that we’ll end up moving to a state with a more reasonable policy.

20

A dear childhood friend of mine found out the hard way that California (or maybe it was just the specific medical school involved?) wouldn’t accept cadavers of people who had committed suicide. Her grandmother, who thought she had made arrangements for whole-body donation, committed suicide, and my poor friend, being the only close family member within 3 time zones, was stuck figuring out what to do with her grandmother’s body. And her grandmother was Jewish (though obviously not observant), and I really doubt your average medical school would be able to handle a religiously compliant Jewish burial, anyway - the body is supposed to be buried in its entirety, among other problems.