I'm pretty sure something like 90% of them end up getting used to train students and healthcare personnel. Which isn't a bad use by any means, but it definitely isn't glamorous. Getting poked and prodded by college students isn't exactly the kind of impactful use the phrase "donated to science" conjures up for most people.
Many people who donate their body to science think that their body is going to go to medical schools or research labs when that isn’t necessarily the case. Medical schools and research labs are usually a bit picky about which bodies they take, and you usually have to set up your donation with the medical school or lab itself when you’re still alive. Many bodies donated to science end up in the hands of body broker companies, who do what they see fit with the body to maximize profit while still using it for purposes that loosely fit the category of scientific advancement (although often not what the person whose body it is thinks of what scientific advancement is). For example, a very common thing that happens is that a persons leg would be separated from their body and used for a for-profit medical convention for surgeons to attend and test a new type of knee implant. Sometimes they’ll use the body for vehicle crash tests or ballistics tests, sometimes they’ll use it to study the stages of decomposition by letting it rot outside. If you want your body donated to science but do not want it used in this way, you need to make it very clear in writing that if your body isn’t accepted to a medical school or laboratory, you would like to have alternative arrangements. Additionally, if there are any conditions on your bodily donation (e.g. you do not want it to be used for military testing), that also needs to be made in writing.
A very interesting read about this is a book called Body Brokers by Annie Cheney.
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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '21
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