5 things to know before donating your body to science

This story was included as an excerpt in WBUR's weekly health newsletter, CommonHealth. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox,But for my grandparents, the question of what would happen to their bodies was easy: They would be donated to science, specifically to the University of California, Los Angeles, which wasn’t far from their home. They weren’t sentimental, and liked the idea they could be helpful for someone else.

One reason for this is each individual is just a little different from the next. I find this somewhat comforting — we really are unique!“We want our surgeons to know what it’s like to cut through skin, fat and muscle, and navigate our ligaments and tendons — before they do it on a living patient,” Ally said.

“You can donate to a medical school, like Harvard,” Ally told me. “But there are also tons of businesses, both for-profit and nonprofit, that accept donated bodies, usually in exchange for a free cremation.” First, Ally recommends talking to the people in charge, and asking detailed questions about how they operate: Do the donor bodies stay with the school, or are they loaned or sent out to other facilities? Will the bodies be used solely for student learning or are they used for other research, too?

“Each school is making its own rules and standards,” Ally said. “Sometimes, it’s even up to the individual anatomy professor to create ethical standards. One anatomy professor I spoke to bemoaned the fact that some professors still think it’s OK for students to store their scalpel blade in the donor’s thigh, for safekeeping. He was horrified by that."

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