They don’t talk about all the potential uses for bodies that have been donated, because if people knew, they wouldn’t do it. Bodies directly donated to medical schools are likely used for training (educational dissections) and research, and sometime bits (e.g. bones) get harvested for transplants, but bodies that are undirected donations actually end up being handed over to an almost entirely unregulated for-profit industry, where they’re sold to anyone, and there’s a lot of uses that people wouldn’t be crazy about. E.g. getting shot and blown up by the military, being used for product testing, remains just getting dumped, etc. (Promises to families that remains will eventually be cremated and returned to them have no legal weight, so it often doesn’t happen.) Apparently funeral homes get a cut of the sales, so they’re motivated to mislead. Donors don’t realize they’re giving their bodies, for free, to be used as a commercial product.
My grandfather went to an agricultural school where they did human dissections (presumably as part of some veterinary training), and apparently they were local vagrants…
It’s fairly clear that this Jeremy Ciliberto creep is little more than a cheap imitation of P. T. Barnum. His google mentions make it clear he’s making ghoulish douchebaggy art, sometimes out of corpses, not educating anyone.
To be clear, for your body to be used in cadaver dissection at a medical school in the US, there is very specific phrasing that needs to go into your will and there are people at those medical schools and lawyers who can help you get the wording right.
All of the anatomists of my generation (including myself) have been taught from day one to respect the cadavers. Students get kicked out of med school/anatomy programs for fooling around with their cadavers.
That’s the thing — when you “donate your body to science” there’s no guarantee where it will go. It’s an unregulated business. Emphasis on business.
Maybe it will train medical students. Maybe it will be used in bomb testing. Maybe it will be plasticized and be on display for hundreds of years. Maybe parts will be made into curios for rich people.
