Would you ever consider donating your body to science?

Of course. It’s in my will. No one else will be wanting it. Might as well do someone else some good when it no longer will do me any good.

Yes, if I felt I had something of interest to be studied. I’ve been an organ donor since we first could sign up for it (when I was in better shape!)

I’d rather be a bag of ashes than a cadaver for students though. By the way, what do they do with cadavers at the end of the semester?

Not really. What if there really were souls and you hover around your body for days after death? Extremely terrifying to see my own body get filleted. Lol.

Sure. For scientific research though, not for a mortician to practice cosmetics on.

Once everything that can be used to help someone else is taken, science is welcome to the rest. Of course, they might not want it unless I have some kind of interesting disease. My understanding is that medical schools want whole bodies, and I would prefer to donate what I can to someone in need.

Here are some other options.

Absolutely! I see no reason to decay in the ground rather than helping science and other people.

Sure I would.

Definitely. Why let your body decay and do nothing when you can help other people by donating it?

First of all I’m gonna let the retrieval team take out all the useable parts after that anyone is welcome to what’s left.

Ha! The question is, would science want my body?

I think not.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room Medical schools are always short of cadavers to practice procedures on. So they would definitely want your body, no matter how old an decrepit it is. People really don’t understand how important it is that we donate more bodies. There are shortages, as it is.

I am a registered whole body donor.

I’ve thought about it, but so far, I haven’t done anything related to donating organs. I am agreeing a lot with @janbb‘s ”For scientific research though, not for a mortician to practice cosmetics on.” If I do decide to donate organs, I want to make sure that something productive will come out of it.

Yes. Which reminds me, I should do something about notifying someone to see to that.

I have donated parts of me. It would actually be an honor to help someone learn from my life mistakes.

One important thing, if it is important to you, make sure arrangement have been made and people are aware.

My father died two years ago today. He had been involved in a study at Vanderbilt looking into Interstitial Lung Disease for over four years. He was slowly dying from the disease and knew it.
I never took the time to ask him what he wanted done with his body, I guess I figured he would live forever, and by the time I asked about either donating his body to the program or at a minimum an autopsy he had already been embalmed. So much potential information lost because of my negligence.
Hell, I don’t even know if it would have been possible for Vandy to have accepted him. I don’t think you can donate someone elses body. Anybody know for sure about this?
I don’t know whether he would have wanted Vanderbilt to be able to look at his lungs and the rest of him after he had died, but I believe he would have. He was so involved with the notebooks and testing. He knew it would not help him but it was important to him to be involved.

I plan to.

That is the plan for me. I need to get it in writing, because my husband is uncomfortable with the idea. He has this weird obsession with traditional funerals. Personally I hate them, and definitely don’t want some dude I’ve never met saying the Paternoster over my body. Much better to go out helping some med student learn how to do heart surgery.

That might be okay. I have had an organ donor card since I was a kid. I remember my parents had to sign it too. I’m dead, what do I care?

Like others have said – take what can be useful, burn the rest.

Good article, @tedibear!

Absolutely! I won’t be using it and I have no religious attachments to contend with. I already plan to donate whatever parts of me are useable such as organs, corneas, skin, hair (for wigs for cancer patients, ‘cause I’ve got long hair) and whatever else they might want to use. The rest they can flush down the toilet, ‘cause I won’t be using my bod anymore, or maybe make fertilizer out of me, that’d be nice. Might as well make it useable to someone who needs a spare part.

I would feel honored if somebody could make use of my body when I’m done with it.

A few days after my dad died, we received a letter saying his organ donation had helped somebody.

What a great letter to receive. Good job, Dad!

To a restaurant, maybe.

I’m signed up to be an organ donor.

I have already arranged to have my body donated. I feel I am too old to donate organs since they are wearing out but a lot of information for future cures and understanding of so many things about the human body will be useful.