It’s a selfless act, donating your body to science.
The University of Technology, Sydney even has a program for it. Started in 2007, it is recognised and trusted in its support of education, training and research in surgical and forensic sciences. Throughout its ongoing work and annual remembrance ceremony, the UTS Body Donation Program is committed to representing the deep gratitude it holds for every donor by treating them with dignity, care and respect.
You think that that’s what you’d expect; until a nanosecond later when you realise that the first idea you ever had about dead bodies came from spooky stories, Grimm or not, and body-snatching horror films. Many a child’s first foray into a vague idea of death is Snow White. Not the Snow White Teeth Whitening Kit, but a bleached Disney version all the same that’s about eight shades lighter than the original.
In 1812, Snowie is a snuffed out corpse. Not a delicate princess, who slips into the kind of deep sleep that turned her pea-tormented cousin so correspondingly green she had to throw twenty mattresses filled with the stuff into therapy.
Which is not a prerequisite for a body bequest.
You think that that’s what you’d expect; until that nanosecond kicks in to remind you that what you do with your own body is your business when you’re aged 18 and over – one of the few hard-and-fasts when it comes to giving away what’s left of you in the end.
You’re in for a bigger surprise than Elizabeth Holmes when a federal grand jury indicted her for conspiracy and wire fraud charges if the assumption is that 21st century deceased donation is more akin to Prince Charming’s kiss, than a glass coffin carrier’s failed foothold violently jolting the poisoned apple piece from Whitey’s dead-not-dead gullet.
You think that’s what you’d expect. For something that’s been going on since 300 BC, transitioned through executed criminals and unclaimed bodies, that arrived in its basic current form in the 1950s, advocated for and estimable by the ’80s, that it’s an industry reformed: in gentleness, and all for the greater good.
Not so, unfortunately.
Despite the majority of nations adhering to WHO principles and national laws prohibiting financial gain from the trading of human parts – whether piece-by-piece or a job lot – non-transplant body donation remains a heavily unregulated industry on both international and federal levels.
Not what you’d expect.
In conditions only 19th century European gore and trauma folklorists would find imaginable, thousands of bodies were left to decompose in France, at Paris-Descartes University. Its Centre for Body Donations was shut down in 2019, and criminal charges brought against staff for severely mishandling body parts, and illegally selling them.
Five years earlier in the US, Jim Stauffer was one of 19 plaintiffs to sue the Biological Research Centre in Phoenix, Arizona. After donating his mother’s body for what he believed to be further research into Alzheimer’s, a year later the facility was raided by the FBI after allegations of body brokering. It found that one of the bodies sold was his mother, Doris. Used by the military to examine the effects of explosives, what was once Jim’s mum was strapped to a chair and a bomb detonated underneath.
A whole load of loopholes allowed that happen.
During the same investigation, buckets of heads, arms and legs were found, as well as a male body attached to a wall. Horrific enough in itself – that it had the head of a woman sewn onto it, despicable and inexplicable.
So the same year that Paris-Descartes University was found to not properly be addressing the nature of existence, a total of $US58 million was awarded in a civil lawsuit to the distraught Arizona families, from the coffers of the centre and it’s owner Stephen Gore.
Yep. Falling right into the category of stuff you couldn’t write, incredulity is outweighed by profanity.
To slip indecency into that indigestible sandwich, Gore’s sentence for his macabre mutilation monetiser amounted to 12 months deferred jail time, and four years probation. First time property and theft felonies carry the same sentence. It seems you can choose your own adventure between being caught pilfering by a cop, or owning a human chop shop.
Refuting morbid rumour, it’s tissue donation, not anatomical, whole body donation that’s used in dentistry to rebuild jaw bone.
Known as an allograft, it’s a procedure that provides the necessary biological scaffolding to support new osseous growth that’s sometimes necessary for dental implants. To eliminate pathogens and immune rejection, the biological material is either freeze-dried, deep frozen or treated with gamma radiation – a sterilisation process in use since the late ’70s.
The 1970s, not the 1870s. Which was a busy time for local Michigan pharmacist Dr S. J. Henderson, who cornered the black market supply of cemetery corpses to medical schools for a hundred bucks a pop; which at the time would buy you 20 acres of land, four roughly-built cabins or a horse-drawn buggy and thirty-one crisp white shirts.
Money for the dead was not dead money. And unlike his convicted accomplices, Dr Henderson apparently recovered from the legal fall-out and continued his medical and pharmaceutical practice. Nice work if you can get it and don’t mind ‘grubby grave robber’ on your resume.
It was however, a time when teeth were harvested from the dead for transplanting.
Given what we know today it’s hardly surprising that they rarely lasted, and frequently transmitted fatal diseases. Swapping a space in your mouth for syphilis, or a tooth for tuberculosis is no fairytale; regardless of the consumption connection in the story of pale princess Snow White – a thoroughly romantic view of the deadly bacterial infection that heavily impacted the lives of the Grimm brothers.
There’s nothing grim about what happens to the teeth of anatomical donors.
How teeth, jaws, nerves and blood vessels connect is part of the important understanding of anatomy. Along with the surrounding oral structures, they’re used by dentists and oral surgeons in training for microsurgical techniques, root canals and dental implant placements. They’re also the testing ground for new and refined tools and procedures for less invasive oral health approaches.
Scientifically and forensically, donor teeth are invaluable. Chemical signatures are locked into dentin and enamel, giving scope for the tracking and research of environmental exposure. DNA in tooth pulp, and dental wear patterns help develop forensic identification techniques that would otherwise be frustratingly slow without such suitable material to work with.
Body bequests give us qualified medical and dental practitioners, without whom many of us would be dead. Without doubt there has been unforgivable ghastliness, but the fairytale ending is that a donor not only generously gifts their body, they selflessly gift the rest of us life.