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November 13, 2002
A: FROM MENTOR MOLLY WILLIAMS
IN MI
My parents arranged to have their bodies donated to a medical
school. We have had many other friends who have done the same.
There is certainly a need for bodies to be available for medical
research and teaching. There are many advances in medicine
that
simply can't be accomplished through in-vitro or animal studies;
you
have to have human tissue both for teaching of new medical
practitioners and for medical researchers. So the availability
of
human bodies is important.
However, another consideration is the importance to the surviving
family to view the body or to have a place where the remains
are
buried. A body used for medical research or teaching must
not be
embalmed, so it has to be transported quickly to the medical
school
or research center. Time for family viewing or last good-bys
is
short. In our family's situation, it would have been possible
to
have the cremated remains returned after the year or two that
the
body was used in teaching or research. With that option the
family
can still have a special burial or scatter the ashes as they
wish.
We chose instead to have the remains interred with others'
received
over the preceding year. We were quite impressed with the
sensitivity of the medical school to the family members. There
was
a memorial service emphasizing the special gift that these
people
had made and how it enabled the plans and aspirations of the
medical
students and researchers.
Incidentally, another very important option is organ donation.
The
gift of organs (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, skin, corneas,
etc.)
can improve or save the lives of people whose own organs have
failed. Even if you are uncomfortable with the idea of willing
your
entire body to science, you might still consider donating
organs for
transplantation. They are critically needed.
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A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
Medicine certainly couldn't have made progress without cadavers.
Modern medical students need to learn anatomy, too, and we
don't want
them to be learning on us while we are still alive. Do any
of the
medical mentors think that simulations can replace real cadavers
in
medical education? Personally, I think any model created by
people
is going to display whatever misapprehensions those people
have and
cannot replace reality itself. If you look at old medical
illustrations you can see that what was drawn then is not
what we see
now - right back to the little homunculus coiled inside the
sperm
cell, a true figment of the imagination. It's hard enough
to see
what's really there when you're looking at the real thing
itself; it
would be impossible to see reality looking only at man-made
imitations.
Autopsies are another matter. Few are done now, because people
find
the idea distasteful and doctors are perhaps overconfident
that all
the new scans let them see enough while the patient was still
alive.
They feel 100% sure of the cause of death. But such certainty
is an
illusion, I've read. Plenty of times an autopsy reveals important
things that had been missed. We will stop learning and future
patient will suffer, I think, if we stop doing autopsies.
Donating organs is a humane thing to do, offering a concrete
good to
a real person, not just the abstract chance of advancing science.
Your loved ones might be absolutely opposed to the idea, worried
that
your spirit could never rest if your body had been put to
use (even
if the parts were subsequently buried). If you couldn't convince
them that your body was to be given to for a good cause, then
perhaps
you might justify not donating it to spare them pain.
Have _I_ given my body to science in my will? No. Not yet
anyway.
Perhaps I'm squeamish, thinking it would end up in the medical
school
here, in front of students I know. I should think about it
harder.
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