What happens when you donate your body to science?

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Death is inevitable and often unpredictable. But you still have control over what happens to your body after you die.

That is if you proactively choose – before you are dead – to donate your body or parts of your body for research. The Health Resources & Services Administration lists eight vital organs that can be donated: heart, kidneys (two of them), pancreas, lungs (also two), liver, intestines, hands (again two) and face. You can also donate tissue, such as your heart valves or corneas, or your blood or stem cells.

But every year, about 20,000 people in the United States choose to donate their entire bodies to science. In that case, what happens to a donor’s body after he or she has died?

The steps of body donation

The first step for donation is to meet the strict requirements that many donation services impose. Unlike donating individual organs or tissues, a donor’s age does not play a major role, says Pamela White, head of anatomy and head of the Body Donation Program at the University of Newcastle in England. But the manner in which a donor dies can change the chances of acceptance. “People sign up in their 40s, we don’t know what they’re going to develop by the time they’re in their 70s or 80s,” White says. Infectious or respiratory diseases that can spread from a donor’s body are disqualifying factors, she adds. Many institutions have weight limits for donors’ bodies; donors are often limited to 180 to 200 pounds or are based on BMI, a controversial and debunked method of analyzing a person’s health.

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But when a donor makes the cut, his body is collected by a funeral director affiliated with the receiving organization. White’s colleague Isobel Duckling, Newcastle technical team leader for anatomy and clinical skills, says that within the next 24 hours a team of technicians will embalm the body by injecting an embalming solution containing formaldehyde into a large artery, which carries the body’s blood through a IV pushes out. a tube connected to a large vein. The team will inject two and a half to four liters of embalming fluid through the body. In Newcastle, Duckling’s team then places the donor in a refrigerator for six to eight weeks. Then it’s the donor’s time to shine: the university will use their body for research or medical education.

An important consideration here, says Duckling, is that donors in Newcastle have the opportunity to decide how their bodies will be used when they first sign up. Some donors can be used to try out new surgical techniques. Others can be used in drug testing or to study the science of decomposition. Some donors can be used as crash test dummies in car safety testing. Some donors, she adds, choose not to participate in research studies and their bodies go straight to medical school. Medical students dissect bodies and gain invaluable hands-on experience in the internal variation between patients’ bodies.

In Newcastle, donors can also choose how long researchers can study their bodies. Some choose to let the medical school keep their bodies indefinitely. Others ask that the school return their bodies to their families after a certain period of time. “We then arrange for that donor to be cremated and the family is contacted, after which the family can attend the funeral service,” says Duckling.

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Newcastle carefully cares for donors as medical students study them. A minimum of two staff members must be present in the room containing the donor’s body or tissue, and access to body storage areas is strictly controlled and restricted.

Choose your donation service carefully

Potential donors should remember that Newcastle’s set-up is not standard and the rules for body donation services vary considerably. Most nonprofit body donation programs in the United States are affiliated with universities. You can view a list of programs by state here. Other services are profit-oriented. Because time and rapid transportation are critical in processing donors, these services are usually tied to geographic location. If you register with the University of California Body Donation Program and then move to another state, you will be asked to delist and register with a local program.

A recent survey of 72 body donation programs in the United States found that most programs did not allow donors to decide how long their bodies would be stored. They also offered limited options for patients to opt out of certain types of research. This policy came under scrutiny when rogue for-profit “body brokers” sent donors to the Defense Department, where researchers shot or blew them up as part of ballistics or munitions tests. This understandably did not go down well with the donors’ families.

Even among nonprofit donation services in the US, standardized regulations are minimal, meaning individual providers set guidelines. Donors who want to ensure their bodies are used in tests that advance medical research or help train doctors should choose their donation service carefully. Duckling says motivations are more practical for some donors. “What we recently discovered is due to the cost of the funeral. We are getting more and more people wanting to donate their bodies,” she explains.

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White emphasizes that donating one’s body to science is a tremendous act of charity, regardless of the donor’s intent. “During their tenure with us – we will retain them for a minimum of three years – they will work very hard and will teach more than 3,000 healthcare professionals. That’s everyone, from pharmacy students, medical students, speech therapists to dentists,” she says.

“The profound impact of our donors’ generosity will live on through knowledge that will benefit generations to come,” said White. “Because of their selfless gift, many others will live.”

This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most bizarre, mind-burning questions, from the common to the unusual. Do you have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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