Ten uses for your body after you die

I found this at CNN.com and it's worth posting here:

By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent

October 28, 2010 8:21 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Like many Americans, you probably think you're pretty charitable. Perhaps you donate money to the needy or ill, give away your old clothes, volunteer at your child's school or participate in holiday gift drives in December.

But you may be missing something. As you're charitable in life, you could also be charitable in death. This holiday season -- Halloween -- you could start thinking about a kind of ghoulish donation: your body.

J. Nathan Bazzel has already made his plans. In 2001, he signed all the necessary documents to donate his body parts to the Mütter Museum, a part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. A friend of his worked there, and he knew that researchers from around the world came to look at its vast collection of body parts.

Bazzel, 38, is HIV-positive, and he wants scientists to learn from his remains.

"If just one person can take a look at my skull and kidneys, which have suffered from HIV and the drugs used to treat it, and learn something from them -- what a magnificent gift," he said.

He's so impassioned that the same year he signed the forms for his postmortem donation, he donated his right hip, which had to be replaced because of damage from an HIV drug, and then three years later, he donated his left hip.

Bazzel, who became the college's communications director two years ago, has already seen the benefits of having real human body parts on display: When high school students come in and see his hips' deformities, his lecture to them on the importance of safe sex takes on a whole new meaning.

Of course, being on display in a museum isn't everyone's cup of tea. So in the spirit of the season, here are 10 ways you can put your body to use after you die. In many cases, you can do more than one.

1. Donate your organs

Nineteen people die every day waiting for an organ such as a kidney, heart, lung, liver or pancreas. Learn about organ donation, sign an organ donor card, tell your family your wishes, and don't be misled by myths about organ donation. If you like, you can donate some organs but not others.

2. Donate your tissue

Your bones, ligaments, heart valves and corneas might not be of use to you in the hereafter, but they can certainly help someone else. Learn about tissue donation, sign a card, and again, tell your family members you've done this so they won't be surprised when the time comes. As with organs, you can specify what types of tissues you'd like to donate.

3. Will your body to a university

Help a future doctor learn about the human body by becoming a cadaver dissected by first-year medical students. A state-by-state list of medical schools can get you started. Be sure to ask exactly what will happen to your body. While you might be used for dissection, you could be used for other purposes within the school, and you might not have much control.

Here's an interesting conversation about the respect shown by students to their cadavers.

4. Help doctors practice their skills

If you'd prefer to be worked on by folks with more experience, actual, not future, doctors can learn from your body. At the Medical Education and Research Institute in Memphis, Tennessee, doctors brush up on their skills and learn new techniques; it's the training facility for organizations such as the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the North American Skull Base Society and the International Spinal Injection Society.

Doctors get to practice (and possibly make mistakes on) the dead rather than the living. In return, the institute provides for transportation for your body to Memphis, pays for cremation once the work is done and returns the ashes to your family (or, if you prefer, to an interment facility in Memphis).

If you like the idea, you can fill out a donor form. If you'd prefer to first see where your body's headed, the institute welcomes visitors.

5. Leave your body to "the body farm"

Did you ever wonder how, on TV shows, detectives know the time of death just by examining the body? Cops can thank the folks at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center for helping them figure it out. "The body farm," as it's known, has "650 skeletons and growing" scattered over 2.5 acres in Knoxville, according to its website. Researchers and students study bodies in varying stages of decay to help anthropologists and law enforcement officials answer important questions, such as body identification and time of death analysis. (For a fascinating account of a visit to the center, see Mary Roach's book "Stiff.")

If you want to become one of those skeletons after you die, you're in luck, as they make donation pretty easy at the Body Farm. Get their Body Donation Packet, fill out their Body Donation Document and complete the biological questionnaire. They'll want a photo of you to help them learn more about "facial reconstruction and photographic superimposition as a means for identifying unknown individuals," according to the center's website.

If you live in Tennessee and within 200 miles of Knoxville, you're really in luck, because they'll take care of all the costs. If not, your family will be responsible for arranging transportation to the center.

Once they're done with you at the Body Farm, your family doesn't get your remains back, so if that's important to you, this isn't your best option.

6. Become a crash test cadaver

Plastic crash test dummies are all well and good, but there's nothing like a real human body to simulate what happens in a car crash. You can will your body to the Wayne State University School of Medicine to become a crash test cadaver by filling out its Body Bequest Form. The form is for donation to the university, but "if a person specifically requests that their body be used in safety testing that is ongoing at the Bio-Mechanics lab, then we would honor that wish," according to an e-mail from Barbara Rosso-Norgan, the school's mortuary supervisor.

7. Give your body to a broker

We don't mean a stockbroker; we mean a body broker, who will take your parts and get them to scientists who will use them for research, training and education.

There are several groups in this business, including Science Care, Anatomy Gifts Registry and BioGift Anatomical.

Generally speaking, here's the upside of these groups: They pay to have your body transported to their facility, and with the parts that are not used in research, they pay for cremation and to have the ashes returned to your family (some will, if you prefer, distribute them at sea). This can save your family a lot of money.

The downside: You don't know where your parts will go. "We don't guarantee that we can use the body in any specific research program, and that's because our research is always changing," said Kristin Dorn, community relations manager at Science Care. "Your intent is to donate to science, not a specific research project."

Some brokers will allow you to say what areas you'd prefer your parts not go to. If this is important to you, find the broker who offers this option. "If someone is ready to donate their body to science, they will definitely need to do some research," Dorn said.

8. Send your body on tour

If you've been to the "Body Worlds" exhibit, you know what plastination is: a process of posing and hardening a body so it appears life-like.

You, too, could become one of these bodies on display by donating to the Institute for Plastination. If you live in the United States or Canada, your body will be embalmed on your own continent and then shipped to Germany, where technicians will perform the plastination process. They'll remove fat and water, "impregnate" your corpse with rubber silicone and position it into a frozen pose (you might be, say, running or sitting cross-legged or performing ballet or perhaps riding a horse). Your body is then hardened into that position with gas, light or heat. The entire process takes about a year, according to the group's website.

Your family pays to get your body to the embalming location, and the Institute for Plastination incurs the shipping costs to Germany.

There are rules about donation. You can be old, and you can be an organ donor, but if you died in a violent manner, it might not work out, as your body must be "largely intact" in order to donate, according to the institute's website.

Also, there's no guarantee your body will end up in one of the five exhibits. Some plastinated bodies are sent to medical schools and training programs, and you don't get to decide the destination of your corpse, according to Georgina Gomez, the institute's director of development.

If you're interested in going on tour and you live in North America, read the Guide to Donors and fill out the Donor Consent Form. There are also forms for European donors.

9. Become a skeleton

Researchers from around the world visit the extensive skeleton collection at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

Here's some information and the legal donor permission form and a donor information form.

The ground rules: Your family pays to get your body to the museum's facility in Albuquerque, and your remains (besides your bones, of course) get cremated and disposed of; they don't go back to your family. Researchers who want to work with the skeletons have to apply to the museum's Laboratory of Human Osteology; the skeletons are not put on display for anyone at the museum to see.

If you'd like to be put on display, see below.

10. Be on display at a museum

Like Bazzel, you can donate parts of your body to the Mutter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

If you do so, you'll be a part of a pretty rarified group. Anna Dhody, the museum's curator since 2004, has received only three inquiries about donation after death, including Bazzel's.

"One woman contacted me and said, 'I have a 120-degree curvature of my spine. Would you like it when I'm done with it?' and I said, 'Yes, please,' " Dhody recalled.

Although the museum is particularly interested in bodies with abnormalities, it'll also consider taking your remains even if there's nothing particularly pathological about them. Either way, your family will have to foot the bill to get you to Philly.

Republicans?

For God's sake, and yours, how can you vote in a Republican majority? They got us into our present financial mess by spending like freaks and deregulating Wall Street, lining their own pockets with corporate and special interest money.

And you want to vote them back in? Are you insane?

What do you think they'll do once in power? They have NO plans that differ from their old administration, so really, what do you think they'll do?

They all say the same thing: cut taxes and create jobs. So? What do you think Obama has been trying to do? He isn't gonna allow those making over $250,000 to pay disproportionately lower taxes: that's one of the things that sunk us! He IS lowering taxes on middle and lower economic groups.

He will not deregulate, but has already strengthened the boundaries for Wall Street.

Heard any Republicans talking about this? NO! They don't want to do this, because it cuts off their cash flow. Heard any Republicans talking about how Obama has been taking real steps to end the wars? NO, because they weren't able to do it.

Now, I don't have a love fest going on for democrats. I think they've dropped the ball we gave them, but as I see things...

I don't want the chickens, like you and me, to be guarded by the wolves, thank you very much.

But, if you believe that Obama is a Muslim, or isn't an American, or wants to take your guns, or any of the other conspiracy theories, you have already stopped reading this blog. Rational isn't in your vocabulary. For the rest of you, please:

USE YOUR BRAINS, NOT YOUR EMOTIONS!

Let's give the current administration a few more years to bail the water out of the hull.

Stupid or ignorant?

These words have negative conotations, but what do they really mean?

Ignorance is not knowing. Each of us is more ignorant than knowledgeable about most things. I am ignorant of stockcar racing, dry walling, oil painting, and just about everything else. I know a good bit about Geology and Psychology, and a smattering of things that I've read about. But about most things I am fully ignorant, just like you.

Ignorance can occur due to a lack of experience, education, or exposure to something. So ignorance is not inherently a negative description.

Stupidity is another animal. A person is stupid when they have the facts before them and choose to ignore them; or, when given a chance to learn about something choose not to. It is stupid to see all the data and the carefully articulated arguments by virtually all the world's experts on global warming, and then choose to ignore it all.

Ignorance and stupidity are not mutually exclusive, however. The most dangerous person to our society, if not the world, is the ignorant and stupid individual. They don't know about something, may even claim to, and when presented with the facts, chooses to ignore them. We can't really handle much more stupidity without grave consequences.

I would love to get each candidate for any office in my office for 30 minutes. I'd ask them pointed questions that isolated their problem-solving skills and general knowledge level, and then I'd hone in on some meaty stuff to ferret out the sham aretists, uncover the false fronts, and unmask the biggots. Then I'd tell all who might listen who the real deals were.

I have a lot of room in my heart for ignorance, but none for stupidity.

Terrorists aren't religious fanatics!

Let's get something straight: terrorists aren't really interested in getting people to convert to their religious belief systems. Nor are they trying to fulfill some religion-directed goal of destroying nonbelievers.

Wanting others to join their beliefs would necessitate a kinder, gentler approach. No one would voluntarily pledge oath to any religion that treated women so badly, that destroyed more than it built, that created a pervasive sense of anxiety and uncertainty. Oh wait a minute, some men would!

Well, I think it's clear that terrorists are simply creators of chaos, lovers of entropy, in disguise. They have anarchy written all over them. They appear to despise all order, all social structures, all ideologies. Islamic terrorists pretend to honor the Koran, but clearly do not speak for the vast majority of Islamic believers. They are actually fighting against their own religion.

In all these ways they are nothing more than anarchists!  It has been convenient to create this disguise, because it gives them more credence and power - which is exactly what they need and want so desperately.

I'd be willing to bet money that the overwhelming majority of those who "join" any terrorists groups are either "lost" souls or are themselves miscreants. Just look at the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, and the Times Square bomber.

I am most fearful of my consistent observation of people over the years: there is clearly a chaotic component in almost everyone. That characteristic, or drive, is closely related to Freud's Thanatopsis. It can be unmasked and energized in a variety of circumstances and it should never be underestimated. As the world and its resources shrink, there will be less and less for more and more. There will be greater pressures and fewer global-level coping mechanisms. I fear that terrorism is a spreading, not an isolated, phenomenon.

I so very much hope I'm wrong.

Is TOYOTA still accelerating?

What happened to the "stuck accelerator" problem? We haven't heard a single report since the rash of them not long ago. Doesn't make sense statistically. Were the lawsuits settled? Were all the cars refitted? Were people faking the problem? Something is up with this story.