From helping medical students to furthering research, see how donating your body can give you a second life — and save others.
Illustration: Brittany England
Monique Hedmann, a third-year medical student at Oregon Health & Science University, vividly remembers the memorial service for one of her teachers.
The students performed an original song about the man they affectionately nicknamed “Bill.” A classmate danced traditional hula. Hedmann organized and sang in a memorial choir. Others stood before the audience – including Bill’s family – and reflected on how much he had taught them.
“There weren’t many dry eyes,” Hedman recalls.
During classes, tutoring sessions and anatomy labs, Hedmann estimates she spent over a hundred hours with Bill. But it wasn’t his mind that he gathered so much information from. It was, literally, his body.
Bill is what is called a “whole body donor.” After death, his body was donated to science.
In this case, that meant medical students like Hedmann spent hours staring at his nameless corpse: learning human anatomy, practicing surgical incisions, and even finding and examining the stomach cancer that eventually claimed Bill’s life.
Although experimentation on corpses sounds macabre, it is a long-standing practice that has the potential to advance medicine by leaps and bounds. It’s also come a long way since the 1800s, when ambitious medical students — and their teachers — robbed graves for the chance to practice dissection.
Today, both aspiring and established doctors depend on the selflessness of donors to perfect their craft, discover new treatments and surgical approaches, and test medical devices.
“Every donor brings a project one step closer to its goal,” says Katrina Hernandez, vice president of donor services for Science Care Inc.serving as a liaison between donors and medical researchers.
The body donation process goes something like this:
An accredited organization or nonprofit, such as a university endowment program, screens potential donors while they are still alive.
It is a thorough medical examination that may include questions about past illnesses and surgeries, intravenous drug use, and communicable diseases. Conditions such as HIV and hepatitis can prevent organ donation. So you may be severely underweight or overweight.
But unlike organ donation, age doesn’t matter.
“A 96-year-old heart is still as valuable as a 26-year-old heart in our world,” says Heidi Kayser, director of donor education and outreach at MedCure.
The information is kept on file — sometimes for many years — until the donor dies. Another medical evaluation is done to approve the donation. If the donor still meets the program’s requirements, the body is discreetly transferred to a facility.
Beyond that, it is not embalmed as it would be at a funeral home.
“Funerals are more about presentation and making the body as alive as possible until the funeral, which can be three days to a week away,” says Tamara Ostervoss, director of OHSU Body Donation program. “Us [process] it’s more about conservation.”
For example, most donors stay in OHSU’s program for two to three years.
If the donation is made through a for-profit program, it is combined with requests from medical research groups and educators who may have short-term needs.
For example, a donor could be used to promote robotic or arthroscopic surgery, perfect heart valve transplants, test laser treatments for acne, teach surgeons to administer local anesthetics, and give first-time patients the chance to learn life-saving techniques. lives.
The Department of Defense is also using donors to test the impact of new technology.
Once a donor’s useful afterlife is over, the remains are cremated and, if requested, returned to the family along with a death certificate.
A letter can also be sent to loved ones, explaining which projects benefited from the donation. At Science Care, for example, each donor participates in an average of six research projects.
In a high-tech world where ears can be 3-D printed and used by medical students
Why would someone choose body donation over a burial treasure upon their last breath?
The simplest reason is financial. The national median funeral costs with viewing and burial is $8,755. Cremation after a funeral is slightly less expensive at $6,260.
Donate your body to science, and those costs simply disappear.
But there are also altruistic reasons to become a donor.
Doris Poulakos became a whole-body donor after dying of Alzheimer’s last fall. At 93, the Franklin, Wisconsin resident had originally hoped to donate her organs, but her age made her ineligible.
MedCure has provided a solution.
“My mom and her sister were two breast cancer survivors and we felt the need to help,” explains one of Poulakos’ daughters, Pam Poulakos. “It’s an excellent alternative to burying and wasting bodies and organs that could be used to advance medical research.”
Pam has not yet decided if she wants to know how her mother’s donation was used. But she and two of her brothers agree that they will also become body donors.
When Hernandez explains that she works for a company that facilitates body donation, the common reaction she gets isn’t “Gross!” but an intrigue.
“People say, ‘This must be so exciting,'” Hernandez says. “Very few people know about it.”
This is the biggest challenge these programs face.
“There’s a lack of awareness and a lack of education,” Hernandez says. “I hear a lot of people say, ‘But me I am a donor. It’s on my driver’s license.”
Most people don’t know that body donation is not the same thing as organ donation. However, that seems to be changing.
According to Hernandez, Science Care has received 60,000 donations since its inception in 2000. At MedCure, donations are growing at an annual rate 30 percent. OHSU accepts between 120 and 150 bodies a year and they don’t even advertise.
“We think the work we’re doing is amazing,” says Kayser. “Our job is to normalize it.”
And to get the word out about how it helps the living.
“If you’ve ever been a patient in your life, you’ve benefited from organ donation,” Hernandez says.
If you’re considering donating your body to science, here’s what to keep in mind.
You can start right away.
Best time to consider body donation? “Early and often,” says Alyssa Harrison, chair of the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) Anatomical Non-Transplant Donation Committee. “One can commit to being a donor at any point in their life through most organizations.”
Find a legal way to donate.
“AATB accreditation is currently the only accreditation for whole body donation,” says Harrison. Currently, only seven are approved to accept whole-body donation. They can be either non-profit or for-profit. Some universities, such as OHSU and the University of California, also have programs.
Read the fine print.
While you may hope that your donation helps find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, for example, you probably won’t have a say in how it’s used.
“Many people sign up to be organ donors long before they die, when it would be impossible to know what the research or education needs might be when they die, or who might be the best fit for their body,” says Brandi Schmitt, executive director. of anatomical services at University of California.
That said, some programs allow donors to opt out of certain types of research.
Trust your gut.
“It is vital that a donor understands and agrees with the mission of the program where they choose to donate,” says Schmitt.
Look for a transparent practice, a donation agreement you understand, and knowledgeable, accessible staff who are willing to answer your questions.
If you feel that you are not receiving enough information or that you do not agree to the terms of the consent, look for another program.
