I checked when Mom died but no one wanted her. :( I even tried with corneas and skin, but no good.

Info on organ & tissue donation; help save a life!

https://www.organdonor.gov/

I tried to donate part of my hip when I had a hip replacement - they wouldn't take it because I'd spent time in a malarial area (I've never had malaria). I'm still listed as an organ donor but I suspect they'll rule that out too.

There are a few people I know, just a few, whose bodies I would like to donate for medical research or teaching or as transplant donors. Anytime next week would be fine,

i'm an organ donor and my son, who would be in charge of my disposition, knows this and will honor it.

in a perfect world and were i much younger than i am now, i would have loved to be part of one of the body worlds exhibits. i toured this exhibit several years ago when it was in st. louis and it was beyond fascinating! i doubt they'd have much use for my 70 year old body with titanium hips. **giggle**

https://bodyworlds.com/

Rob, I think I know more about my organs than a medical student. :)

Ninapearl, I went to a bodyworlds exhibit with my brother and SIL. It was the hideous. The last thing I would want is to end up in that. Gross. My SIL loved it!

l’ve offered to be a living fat donor and no one has taken me up in the offer

Seriously, I'm not sure you would know more than medical students guided by physicians? But whatever makes you happy!

It was the hideous. The last thing I would want is to end up in that. Gross.

i get it, it's definitely not for everyone and i dare say, there are probably more people that feel as you do than as i and your SIL do.

body "mechanics" have always been fascinating to me and this definitely takes it to a whole other level. i wish there were still exhibits within a decent distance as i would love to see what they have done with animals.

The medical student who needs to dissect a body needs something standard. Not missing parts, not fat or extremely thin or anything anomalous. They need standard, straight forward regular. That is why you wont qualify if you dont fit those parameters. Before they branch off into the void they need normal. Normal is hard to find in the dead body world. They mostly settle for old normal. Eventually not normal based on their speciality is what they will want but a one off is hardly cost effective. You would donate to a body farm.

My Dad who is 94, had originally planned to donate his body to the faculty of medicine at UBC. A couple of years ago, he recinded his wishes because he "doesn't want medical students tossing his eyeballs around the room." Give me strength!

@foodonastump ”No way I’m getting mummified”. I doubt it would come to that. Generally bodies donated for science are dissected by medical students or put out on the Body Farm to see the effects of different conditions on decomposition to assist in medical forensics.

@Suzieque I was hearing on the radio the other day about a service in Washington state which takes a body and places it in a box of alfalfa hay and other natural plant products for two months. At the end of the two months all that is left is a giant box of compost that they give back to the decedent’s family to use as they see fit, to establish a special garden or whatever. If the family doesn’t want the compost, the company has a special forest they will scatter it in. That’s how I want to go, turned into rose bushes 😁

Colleenoz, the current issue of Harper's has an article about body composting. I haven't read it yet.

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/to-be-a-field-of-poppies-natural-organic-reduction-composting-corpse/

I'm surprised at the of number of people who think they know more... I mean, y'all are so much smarter!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmgYCI3OWw4

All of this makes me think of that great John Prine song.

Also, Mary Roach's book Stiff is a very entertaining read that gives a lot of insight about what happens to bodies donated to science. It's not all med students. You could become a crash test dummy.

Love John Prine...

I considered donating myself to a body farm, where they leave you out and let the coyotes eat you, but there are lots of coyotes here, if I could only manage to get myself out there in the forest, but it's a long walk if you are dying.

@colleenoz - I have a tendency to overuse commas, but in this case I missed one that would have made my post more clear. Let me try again:

No way, I’m getting mummified.

(But I’ll further clarify that I was kidding.)

You could just donate body parts without donating your whole body.

My daughters MIL donated her organs which I think was a good thing. However, after she had a stroke which left her brain dead, the 8 children had no closure. They kept her alive on machines until they could arrange for organ donations to be shipped to various places.

It was very disturbing to the family as she was already dead, yet kept alive by machines to keep those organs alive.

In the end, it was a good thing as they used so many organs, even her corneas, and all were shipped to various places in the US.

It was very difficult for the family. Once it was finished, the body was returned to the funeral home for burial.

Jane

Blanket donation to science can mean being used as a cadaver for medical students, FOR YEARS. Donating parts means something totally different. Be sure you are good with the outcome.

All adults in England are assumed to have agreed to organ donation. If you don’t want to do it you need to opt out. “Having an illness or medical condition doesn't necessarily prevent a person from becoming an organ or tissue donor. The decision about whether some or all organs or tissue are suitable for transplant is made by medical specialists at the time of donation, taking into account your medical, travel and social history.

There are very few conditions where organ donation is ruled out completely.” From NHS website.

Whole bodies are a different matter. For that you need to liaise with a medical school.

Elmer, don't know if you've heard of the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, but he had himself stuffed. I believe he's still on display in London.

I considered donating myself to a body farm, where they leave you out and let the coyotes eat you, but there are lots of coyotes here, if I could only manage to get myself out there in the forest, but it's a long walk if you are dying.

I have heard it said that coyotes don't always wait until you are dead before starting their meal.

I've considered that too.

Yeah Jane, I heard they don't like you to be too dead before they start yanking organs. That calls into question the "moment of death", if there is such a thing. These monks can take weeks to show outward signs of death.

"Three days after his heart stopped, Geshe Lhundub Sopa was leaned upright against a wall, his odorless body perfectly poised, his skin fresh as baked bread. He looked like he was meditating, remembers Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscientist and friend of the late Buddhist monk.

Sopa, a tutor of the Dalai Lama’s in Tibet, moved in 1967 to Wisconsin, where he co-founded the Deer Park Buddhist Center and taught South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

By conventional Western standards, Sopa died on August 28, 2014. Five days later, and two days after Davidson’s initial visit, the neuroscientist returned to Deer Park and observed his friend’s body a second time. “There was absolutely no change. It was really quite remarkable,” he said.

By the standards of conventional Western medicine, Sopa was dead, though with a strangely preserved corpse. By the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Sopa’s body harbored a mind that remained very much alive. Like other accomplished Buddhists, Sopa was believed to have entered a meditative state known as thukdam, during which his consciousness would wisp away into a spare, luminous awareness.

Thukdam, or thugs dam, in Tibetan, is an honorific meaning “one engaged in meditation.” For Sopa, this meditation, also known as “clear light,” lasted seven days before his body began to decay and was cremated, according to his obituary on Deer Park’s website.

Reports of thukdam—often accompanied by lurid, Night of the Living Dead-type headlines—“Shocking! 200-year-old Mongolian Monk Mummy Still Alive”—regularly arrive from the Tibetan diaspora, originating in Indian monasteries and Buddhist centers from New Zealand to rural Wisconsin. Thukdam typically lasts much shorter than two centuries, more like two or three weeks. As with other faiths, the lack of post-mortem decay is seen as a sign of spiritual attainment. (The Dalai Lama hinted recently that it could also betray an unhealthy attachment to the world.)"

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/thukdam-project/

I don't like the idea of letting wild animals consume a corpse. So many people take weird drugs it is likely the wild animals would ingest some of the medication.

I don't like the idea of letting wild animals consume a corpse. So many people take weird drugs it is likely the wild animals would ingest some of the medication.

What with chemical dumping into waterways, heavily sprayed vegetation that may enter the food chain, medicated farm animals meant for food, sadly, it's possible they are goint to get tainted one way or the other.

I'm thinking about taking myself off the approval on my driver's license. What the family has to go through to allow their loved one to be a donor is difficult.

I will always have the organ donor designation on my driver's license and would strongly encourage anyone else to do the same. The quality of life, and in fact sometimes life at all, that it can give to someone else would far outweigh the momentary grief caused by the process, in my opinion. My family would be proud to make that sacrifice.

I will also say that, in my opinion, anyone who feels that they know the viability of their organs better than the medical professionals who will assess them when the time comes, is, for the most part, fooling themselves.

I have literally zero care about what happens to my body after my soul leaves it, so to the extent it can be of some sort of service to someone (including science in general), I say - great.

One of the worst things of my life was having to cut up and examine a dead cat in a necessary college science class in order to continue in nursing school. We had to pay for the cat ourselves. After each class the cats were put into a barrel of formaldehyde to be used when the class met again. Then later I witnessed an autopsy. No way do I want my body used like that.

I don't take any drugs....weird or otherwise. The wild animals are safe with me.

Hu-62945853....ditto on the dead cat. We had to dissect mummified cats when I went to school to be a vet tech. It was beyond disgusting.

"What the family has to go through to allow their loved one to be a donor is difficult."

IMO, not half as difficult as what a family has to go through to watch their loved one needlessly dying for lack of a donated organ.

"One of the worst things of my life was having to cut up and examine a dead cat"

My relative who's a vet has described at various times the thrills and spills of their first year gross anatomy class. I don't remember the exact number of species that were dissected but it was perhaps 7. Representing both the most common likely encountered - dogs and cats, a horse (yeah, really, hung from an old fashioned overhead butcher's track) and a diversity of types - a ruminant (a sheep), a reptile, a fish, a bird, etc., Most surprisingly, this person's First Place vote for the most disgusting and off-putting animal examined was---------- a chicken.

Whatever organs anyone may want are theirs for the taking, regarless of inconveniance. I kinda hope to have mine well used by the time I die ;-) No so keen on donating to science, though.

Elmer, why was the horse hung from a butchers track?

One of the bad things about the cat that I dissected, was it was a female....a long haired calico cat. She had been spayed. She had obviously been someone's pet at one time. The dogs we got to work on came from the Houston pound. Some of the research labs in the med center used beagles...they were sort of the preferred dogs for many reasons, but some also came from the pound. When I would go to pick up dogs for class, if I saw a dog wearing tags, I would get the number, call the clinic and get the owner's name and call them and tell them their dog was in the pound. The dogs had three days, and if the owners happened to miss the call when the pound called them....the dog was euthanized or could end up in research or was even given to our class for us to learn how to spay, etc. I don't know how it is now...but that was the way it was in 1972.

I had to dissect a cat too in college. In high school it was a giant worm and frog. All pretty gross. The cat especially because you wrapped it back up and took it out multiple times at later classes.

The weight. The carcasses were refrigerated when not in use in the anatomy lab and a horse is too large to be easily moveable. The largest animal otherwise was the sheep and that could be moved on a flatbed, 4 wheeled cart. Maybe how it was was what was done at this particular vet school and others do it differently or don't dissect horses in anatomy lab classes.

Both of my parents announced their intentions to have their bodies donated to medical school or higher education facility after their death. It was a fairly simple process, IIRC. Coroner pronounced death and recorded death records and the rest was handled out of sight. Ashes returned a few years later.

Elmer, I’ve never seen a horse nor cow necropsy done by hanging the body, that‘s why I asked. Seems like it would be awkward.

Cow/horse carcasses are often moved by small front end loaders or simply dragged by a vehicle.

I finished the Harper's article about body composting. This is defitely the way to go for me. Since it's new ( although probably the oldest means of disposing of dead bodies), it could be considered "science", the science of decomposition. The article says medications are very well broken down too.

"Elmer, I’ve never seen a horse nor cow necropsy done by hanging the body, that‘s why I asked. Seems like it would be awkward."

Was your experience at a vet school?

I don't remember how large the vet school class was but I remember hearing that the work was done in teams and for the horses in particular, there were fewer teams with more members than for other animals. If the class had 80 students and 10 teams of 8 when doing horses, using vehicles to move the carcasses out and then back in to the fridge would have taken a fair amount of time. Much faster to hang on hooks attached to wheeled "cars" on an overhead rail and have the students push out their animals to work on.

The work done was dissections, not necropsies. They weren't trying to determine cause of death but were performing dissections to see and feel the internal components of the different animals and probably, to an extent, to compare one to another. .

Yes, my experience was at a vet school and in the field.

Usually, the animal is lying on its side and parts are removed as they are examined.

You're a vet?

Elmer, like you (I think) I’m not a vet. I am an RVT, though. I’ve worked in a rural vet clinic and in the Provincial Dept. of Agriculture and have spent plenty of time observing in a vet school.

I’ve performed several carcass prosections/dissections on farm animals.

It’s interesting that your relative studied a horse in that method (hanging by an old fashioned butcher‘s track ) whether it was a dissection or a necropsy.

I can see moving a horse by a hoist or sling but the actual work would not be done while it was hanging in my experience.

I'm not sure what your point is but I'm confident my description is accurate and whatever was done and how the school handled animal bodies was sufficient and appropriate to teach each year's group of future veterinarians animal anatomy. I'll add that I also learned from conversations over time that each carcass was respectfully addressed and thanked before each new investigation began, for its contribution to the education of the students. And a similar ceremony was performed at the end of anatomy class. Which, I believe, was an all year class.

My experience is that to a far greater extent than with physicians and nurses treating humans, a large number of vets and techs (though not all) get very emotionally involved with their patients and have very solemn feelings about their responsibility to do the best they can for animals who can't describe their feelings or do anything about their maladies. What I've seen and heard about many of them in that regard, though from a distance, is quite moving. Because of those feelings, I was told some found anatomy class to be very difficult.

Goodness Elmer! Relax

I’m not trying to make a point.

I thought I was conversing with you. I was relating my experience.

I’d never heard of a horse being hung on a butchers track like that. That’s all, nothing more.

I'm quite relaxed but your comparing your experience as a tech of examining a few dead horses in a field to what happens in a vet school was puzzling.

If it adds or subtracts from your visualization of the setting, the anatomy lab was a large interior room (with large exhaust fans to aid ventilation) in a classroom building, admittedly a large one, and not near anything resembling a barn, a stable, or anything similar where larger animals might be found or kept. I saw it in person though not on a day a class was in session.

@User

”I'm thinking about taking myself off the approval on my driver's license. What the family has to go through to allow their loved one to be a donor is difficult.“

I would hope my family members would be happy to think that in some way I was living on, saving someone else’s life.

Elmer, I have worked in a modern vet college, an agricultural lab, rural vet clinic, barns, stables, and fields. Many horses, many donkeys, many cows, many pigs, many llamas. I have spent 12 hours a day with large animal vets, indoors and outdoors. Why would you find my comments puzzling?

I saw it in person though not on a day a class was in session.

Oh, my apologies Elmer. You’d definitely be the most knowledgeable on it then.

I never said I doubted what you said. No ”point” was trying to be made.

What do I know. 🙄 Carry on.