So, I’ve been reading Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, and I got to an interesting portion, which I’ll paraphrase–
Apparently, infant cadavers cannot be had for research purposes. Good data for their behavior in car crashes doesn’t exist because there is no source for dead children. The author suggests this is because nobody wants to ask parents to donate their dead baby to science. She relates one anecdote about a 1993 research team who managed an impact study by getting bodies without consent (!). When awareness was raised about this study, it was apparently shut down.
Now, I can agree that the study she refers to was highly unethical (in that consent was not obtained), but the value of infant cadaver data seems obvious to me. I don’t have children, so I can’t say whether I’d be willing to donate my recently dead infant to science, but I am an organ donor and am totally comfortable with people getting what they can out of my body when I’m dead.
I suppose the debate could range over a number of points. Is the scientific value of an infant cadaver greater than the moral weight of its use in experiments? Would you be willing to donate your recently deceased infant to science? Should the ethics of cadaver use differ for infants and if so, why?
(My apologies if this seems like a callous question to anyone, but it has been weighing heavily on my mind).
well, as far as my uninformed opinion goes, no, there’s no difference at all. babies are people too, right? just smaller…and not quite as smart…and incontinent. (and yes, i do believe that people should be able to get abortions if they want to, but that’s not the debate…not yet, at least.) but yeah, as i see it, the big (and possibly only) reason a person wouldn’t want to donate their dead baby is because they’re still attached and they see the baby as an object; an object that they have control over, even in its death. yeah, it’s a cold and pretty callous way of looking at it, but the shoe at least seems to fit right now.
Yeah, I considered making parallels to abortion, but I decided that was too much of a stretch. It might be interesting to see whether there’s any correlation between opposition to abortion and opposition to infant cadaver research.
The main difference I see in this question is that most cadavers willed to science are so willed by that person before he or she died. An infant, pre-mortem, cannot make this decision. Most people confronted with the choice of what to do with a loved one’s body will not consider donating to science. Grief is a terribly powerful and complex emotion, and most people begin to deal with it by disposing of their loved one’s body in culturally accepted manner. It would be hard enough to release the body of one’s parent, sibling, or spouse into the custody of researchers, but one’s child? I would be astonished if the option would even occur to a grieving parent, let alone the ability to hand over their child’s corpse.
The only way to accomplish this would be to start educating and persuading people in the same manner that we do for organ donation. Even then, I would expect little success. It’s one thing to know your dead baby’s heart will live on in another baby. That’s a direct, palpable connection, and you still have your child’s body to grieve over and bury. Cadaver research is far more abstract and much more difficult to assign emotional importance to.
also I think most parents don’t ever want to consider that their infant might die. Surely wouldn’t want to cause a jinx by even considering body donation.
Well I would say there would be more of a correlation between the opposition of stem cell research and this, because of the fact that you just use what is there. From what I read I assume this isn’t some law restricting it, just a taboo that you shouldn’t use dead babies for research. I guess the best way to change that then would be to let people know about the issue. If people don’t want to give up their kids, then I guess this needs no more discussion. I’m only 21 and I really hope I’m not gonna have a little me running around for at least a few more years, but at this stage, I would say that if it benefits infants in general, and it would serve a purpose, then it would be a very noble thing to do. I just can’t picture people being enthused about coughing up dead babies for research.
Any information regarding children’s cadaver research vs. consenting adult? What about non-consenting adults? I don’t think it’s as much taboo as it is right of access.
It’s not taboo on the researchers side, but it’s a taboo subject for the parents to even approach. I wouldn’t even touch that conversation with my wife/girlfriend if someone paid me…
It’s a tough one. I’m a big supporter of cadaver study. We gave both my grandparents, my mom, and my uncle to the university for study. I would do it with an infant as well. But cadavers in an impact study? The violence associated with that would be pretty hard to handle psychologically. I know it needs to be done for the benefit of the living, but I think I’d rather not know it’s happening.
Some facts: No healthcare provider asks anyone, for a cadaver for research. Maybe the medical examiner does, but I’ve never heard of it. People will their bodies to medical schools, but, as has been mentioned, parents never anticipate their healthy child’s death.
When a child does die unexpectedly, we are mandated to request organ donation, but for transplant, not research.
A parent can skip the mental image of their child’s organs being harvested, because there is a larger goal in the end, helping another child, but allowing one’s child to be used in research has a mental image welded to it of their baby being cut up and looked at. Least Original User Name Ever I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly, but if you mean a child’s or infant’s body is no different from an adult’s, except for size, is incorrect.
There are many things about a child’s anatomy and physiology that are radically different from adults.
Infants have more bones than adults, their bones are softer and more pliant. Their proportions are much different. They have an organ in their uppr chest called the Thymus that is about half the size of their liver, that can hardly be seen in an adult. Early on, even their circulation is different.
One solution would be to purchase such baby bodies from countries that are willing to sell them. However practical that would be, it would also open up a huge can of ethical worms.
Didn’t we use to do that with India? (Thats how horror films used to get real body parts.) Also there’s the risk that some cash strapped orphanage will have a surge in SIDS.
Part of the premise is wrong. I only know a piece of what goes on from my personal experience. My baby daughter died this summer at 6 weeks of age from what is believed to be one of the rarest genetic diseases in the world (sulfite oxidase deficiency, less than 100 cases reported worldwide).
We met with tons of researchers and doctors while she was still alive and determined that whatever parts of her body needed to be saved for research would be. Harvard researches kept about 1/3 of her body after she died in my and my wife’s arms. They have been studying it ever since.
They called us two weeks ago to let us know they had found a research lead and they wanted to send some tissue sample to Europe to grow some cell lines. We need this research done for our own sake because it will be the only way we can know if a future child is doomed before birth.
In some places there have been enough scandals about people taking organs from the bodies of children for research purposes, without the parents’ knowledge or permission.What has emerged is that people do care, and do want to bury their baby whole.
Here, a body donated to science or for reasearch is donated by the dead person themself. It cannot be done by a relative post mortem and unclaimed bodies cannot be used by medical schools.
People need to be allowed to grieve in their own way, and if that means that they need their child’s body buried or cremated intact as soon as possible after death, then that’s what you do. Sometimes people who say that they wouldn’t mind being an organ donor or if their body ended up in a belljar somewhere feel completely differently when confronted by the death of a relative.
First and foremost a death is about a family’s private and personal tragedy, it is not an opportunity for other people to advance their own agenda, whatever that might be. If the family have overtly or implicitly made their wishes known, then it would be disrespectful, insensitive and pretty heartless to try and talk them into something they’re not comfortable with.
If you have no reason to think that they would object, or have implied or stated outright that they wouldn’t mind, then by all means have that conversation, but sometimes it would be futile and harmful to do so.
What about people without families ? I thought that street people and vagrants that died were commonly taken for anatomical research. I guess that infanticide occurs once in a while and these bodies with no ID would be available for research and study no ?
Shagnasty sorry to hear about your baby. In your example donating the body clearly might help others in the future not to suffer as you did. So your actions are understandable. While donating a body for something more ambigious like scientific research or car crashes is much harder to grasp appreciate.
I guess most people don’t know ( I didn’t until I read this thread) that infant cadavers aren’t available. That their anatomy is very different.
In some places vagrants may well be used for research, etc.
In this country (uh, Ireland) and in the UK it is not legal to use a body in a medical school without the donor’s informed consent.
Unclaimed bodies get a pauper’s burial paid for by the state. Just because you die without family or friends it shouldn’t be assumed that you would want your body to be donated, being the gist of the argument.
Bodies which are donated to medical schools are returned to their families 12-18 months later for burial, or the university will organise burial/cremation if the family prefers. When the body is returned it is returned with all organs. In my university there was a bucket at the end of the dissecting table, and any pieces of skin, fat or fluid which were removed from the body were placed in that. Also, pieces of tissue paper used to wipe the body and which had fat or fluids on them were also put in the bucket. The family got every single bit of their loved one back.
Just because we were cutting up dead people it didn’t mean that we treated them disrespectfully. No hats, caps or chewing gum in the building, no nicknames for the bodies (we only knew their initials, age and what they had died from) and absolutely no horseplay. Every 4 years the college has a multi-faith, non denominational Service of Thanks and Remembrance in the chapel, every current medical student attends, as well as hundreds of relatives of donors. The relatives really appreciate it.
I just saw a program on this. It was very interesting. It followed the case from the discovery of the body, the perusal of all the deceased’s belongings to determine assets, next of kin, wills, etc. They make an honest effort to find next of kin (though sometimes when they do find them, the next of kin has little emotional reaction…that part was very sad). If they don’t find any family members, a tetam inventories the belongings and loads them into a truck. They then auction all the person’s belongings to generate cash to pay rent and any other outstanding bills. Many of these people are living in transient hotels or other low-rent situations.
The body is then autopsied to determine cause of death (though I’m not sure they do it in all cases) and the bodies are then cremated. The ashes are stored for a couple years and then are all deposited into a mass grave with a headstone that has the year of death (or burial…I forget) engraved on it.
The Anatomical Gift Society in Illinois operates in the same way – the utmost respect is given to the deceased. The only difference is that there is no option for getting the body back as tissue. You can only do a cremation. The time period was stated as 12 to 18 months for us as well, but we got my mom’s ashes back in six months. I know that there is a shortage of bodies for student doctors to train on, and that may be the reason we got her back so quickly. They just didn’t have enough cadavers available that they’d store them for any length of time.
My mom died of colon cancer. I always hope there was something useful they learned that will help others battle the disease successfully.