How To Donate Your Body to Science

[neadods]

I'm not kidding; that is the topic of this post. (I'm in an estate-planning state of mind and think this topic is VERY important.)

If you want to donate your body to science - and there's an excellent book titled STIFF by Mary Roach that discusses what happens to the corpses - you need to plan in advance, because this has to be set up by you while you're still around to do the job.

If you have a specific hospital or research center in mind, talk to them directly regarding their rules and needs; their requirements will supersede anything I say here.

If you just generally want to donate your body, you need to find your State Anatomy Board* and ask them to send you donation forms. You fill out a rather detailed set of forms regarding your background, race, and health, and send 'em back. You get to specify if you want your body returned to someone (and if it needs to be returned in viewable condition) or if it should just be cremated and dealt with by them. There's also a card for you to sign and carry with the Anatomy Board's contact info; mine's just behind my driver's license, where it will hopefully be seen by anyone pulling out the license at the scene of an accident.

My estate notebook starts with a page saying "I have donated my body blah blah contact info."

I also have a living will & medical power of attorney, and if y'all are squicking at the idea of donating your body, then at least, for the sake of your family and friends, have these. My medical power of attorney haa a cascade, so that if whatever gets me also gets the first person on the list, it doesn't become worthless. The living will has a specific codicil: basically I ask for resuscitation *IF* I would have a certain quality of life, but if resuscitation would mean permanent pain or severe mental disablement, the doctors and my medical executor are to pull every plug they can lay their hands on.

I refuse to be the next Terri Schiavo.



*For U.S. citizens, obviously. For everyone else, best I can offer is "Google 'donate body to science.'" You're still likely going to need to do the donating while you're still breathing.

Comments

[lagilman]

I already carry a card that says "when I die, use every bit of me possible to give life to someone else."

Not like I'll be needing any of it.


{Jewish tradition bans the donation of body parts for the same reason they ban tats - you're not supposed to defile the body God gave you. I figure, if we're made of dust, dust can be used to replace anything missing, if need be. )

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Not like I'll be needing any of it.

Seriously! The page in the estate notebook has the contact info for the Anatomy Board and the notice that if the AB doesn't want me, render me for all parts possible.

I don't believe in an afterlife or a deity. As the youngest, odds are good that I will be the sole survivor of my branch of the family. Taking all my bits and bobs with me into the grave would be the height of selfishness.

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Very thorough. Very good advice. I have organ donor card, and living will. Maybe I need to be more specific!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

In between is the medical power of attny, which lets someone else make the decisions between the points when you can make them and when they need the living will. Highly recommended, and with a "cascade" instead of a single name. (Mine gives power, in total, to my brother. If he's not around, to my father. Etc. until I run out of family... although come to think of it, I should have a non-family member in the loop somewhere.)

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Very useful. It's not generally realised (both here in the UK and, presumably, elsewhere) that 'donation to science' is not the same as organ donation - and the former requires much more pro-active arrangement covering everything from anatomy studies (students still need to do dissections) to DNA research - none of which require fully healthy organs (which is just as well, really...).

Not that 'science' always accepts the donation.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's my understanding, based on Stiff, that what the medical schools don't want to dissect, various branches of medicine (such as reconstructive surgery) may want to play with. And that because sometimes computer models and dummies don't work, automobile companies still do crash tests with corpses.

Basically, that if you don't stipulate, there are bunches of different ways bits of you can be useful even if one branch of medicine and research isn't interested.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

NO ONE would want my body when I'm dead (after all, no one wants it while I'm alive - not even, much, given the state it's in!)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Heh.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

I'm too chicken to donate my body to science in general (mostly because I know what undergraduates do to them in their first semester at uni), but I carry an organ donor card, at least. Not as if I'm going to be needing the parts wherever I go, but I'm averse to my body lying on some metal slab for months while squeamish students pick at all my parts ;)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm averse to my body lying on some metal slab for months while squeamish students pick at all my parts

I may not have been meant to giggle at that mental image.

Organ donation is a wonderful, important thing. If science doesn't want all of me, medicine can take bits of me.

[sethrak.livejournal.com]

I've been an organ donor since I was old enough to do so, and I do periodic spot checks to make sure my husband is aware of this. "Hey, honey, pop quiz. Am I an organ donor?" "Yes dear." He hasn't gotten it wrong once.

You make an excellent point about the need for cascading POA. I'd hate to have Tom and I both in a car accident and thus my parents in charge. ::shudder::

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'd hate to have Tom and I both in a car accident and thus my parents in charge.

Exactly!

[fyrdrakken]

I'm still at the stage in my life where I have no estate to speak of -- and given my lack of children or partner (and the unlikelihood of acquiring either), and given I'm living with my mother now and for the foreseeable future, I haven't seen fit to do any formal paperwork. (I'm 34 and from a long-lived family -- in case of tragic accident I'm comfortable with letting my parents handle things. In another decade or two I'm going to be thinking about what happens when I have to make these decisions for them, and I suspect I'll be making my own arrangements at the same time.)

For now, I've settled for mentioning to my mother that I'm in favor of A) being an organ donor and B) cremation -- haven't discussed it with my father, but when Stepmother #2 died in a car wreck he had them take what little tissue was still of use, after as long as she'd been lying before her body was collected. (Corneas and skin for grafts, at least.) And my grandfather was taken off life support with very little drama earlier this month, so I've seen how well Dad handles these things. (Helps that he's trained as a medical doctor and has a very practical and realistic assessment of things like quality of life and probability of recovery.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

When I bought the house my parents insisted on my making up a proper will and the associated documentation. Aside from the house and car, I have very little of major value - but it would mean a lot as a job lot to some charity or other.

And better to deal with the little things myself. The family felt very, very guilty when it didn't know what to do with some of my grandfather's prized possessions. (Although, I have to confess, that I know my mother directly refused to carry out some of his non-will-stipulated wishes because the putative recipients of some things pissed her off mightily.)

I want to make even the little stuff as painless as possible.

[fyrdrakken]

I don't know how my grandmother would have handled things if she'd been the one widowed, but after she died Paw-Paw just turned all the female relatives loose on her stuff at Thanksgiving so he wouldn't have to deal with it. My aunt took charge, my female cousins and sister and I and an aunt-by-marriage were all present, and we all got to claim what we liked the looks of (and could plausibly fit into) before my aunt was left to take the remainder and donate it to charity or take it to Goodwill or sell it on eBay or whatever. (I found out at my grandfather's funeral that quite a few nice outfits had been taken to a battered women's shelter where the women are provided with nice clothes for job interviews. We agreed that Grandmama would have liked that.)

As for my grandfather's things, it turns out that the art supplies and woodworking equipment were specifically mentioned in the will as going to my uncle (who paints and does things with wood), and everything else has been going in a sort of slow process of attrition. (There's no rush, since my uncle is taking the house and it's going to be a while before he and my aunt-by-marriage can wind things up in Midland and find Gail a job and get moved in.) Dad is annoyed that my aunt appears to be running off with a lot of stuff in the meantime, but I suspect the things people really cared about were already claimed in the time surrounding Paw-Paw's funeral. I'll take stuff that I like and want, but I'm not interested enough in acquisition to go driving 90 miles out there just to rummage through knick-knacks filling my pockets. (Paw-Paw had mentioned wondering whether he should be cleaning out the house getting it ready to sell last fall, when he was figuring out he was probably on the verge of winding up in a rest home. He specifically decided to leave it to the family to deal with, on the grounds that he wanted us to be able to grab the things we wanted rather than having it all go to strangers.)

[raqs.livejournal.com]

Good post! And good point. All medical schools, I know, need donations, and parts are just as important as wholes.

Please don't, however, perpetuate the myth that if you don't do your estate planning (which you totally should!) you'll end up like Terry Schiavo. I know from my own family that most doctors are perfectly happy to let you die; in fact in the United States it may not be possible to get any doctor to attend you doing it, or pay the least bit of attention. The idea that all deaths are prolonged by extreme measures simply isn't the case. It's far more likely that no efforts will be made to prolong your death than that more efforts than you want will be made to prolong your death.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that I fear doctors in general prolonging a life not worth living, it's that by putting my directives down that specifically, there is nothing for any family member and putative spouse to argue over. (Fortunately, I got the wording from that clause from my parents, who also have it; there is now nothing for me and my brother to argue over either. As we're co-executors on the medical power of attorney, that's really important.)

I always saw the Schiavo story as a warning against letting competing caretakers try to project their wishes upon you, not medical overreach.

[lizvogel.livejournal.com]

I loved STIFF. I rather like the idea of rotting gently in the sun -- or the shade, depending on where the researchers have placed me. ;-)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

"Being dead is like being on a cruise... you lie around all day and nobody expects much of you." I fell in love with the book on the first line.

[fandance.livejournal.com]

My college roommate was majoring in nursing. She would come back from class and tell me about the visits to the Morgue, etc. She said that all the teachers emphasized that the bodies were treated with respect, and insisted the students treat them the same way.

Both of my parents donated their bodies, to Gifts for Humanity in Philly (I think that's the name)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My grandfather was a doctor, and talked a bit about how the students made sort of pets of their cadavers, but those were different days.