Death is inevitable and often unpredictable. But you still control what happens to your body after you die.

This is if you proactively chose – before you died – to donate your body or body parts for research. Health Resources and Services Administration lists eight vital organs that can be donated: heart, kidneys (two of them), pancreas, lungs (also two of them), liver, intestines, hands (two more) and face. You can also donate tissue, such as your heart valves or corneas, or your blood or stem cells.

But around 20,000 people in the United States choose to give their whole body to science every year. In this case, what happens to a donor’s body after death?

The stages of body donation

The first step to donating is meeting the strict requirements put in place by many donation services. Unlike individual organ or tissue donation, the donor’s age is not an important factor, says Pamela Whitehead of the department of anatomy and head of the body donation program at the University of Newcastle in England. But the manner in which a donor dies can change their chances of being accepted. “People sign up when they’re in their forties, we don’t know what they’re going to develop when they get to seventy or eighty,” White says. Infectious or respiratory illnesses that can spread from the donor’s body are disqualifying factors, she adds. Many institutions have weight limits for donor bodies-donors are often capped at 180-200 pounds or based on BMI, a controversial and debunked method to analyze a person’s health.

But if a donor qualifies, their body will be collected by a funeral director connected to your recipient organization. White’s colleague Isobel CanetonNewcastle’s technical team leader for anatomy and clinical skills, says that in the next 24 hours a team of technicians will embalm the body by infusing an embalming solution containing formaldehyde into a main artery, which expels the blood of the body via a tube connected to a major vein. The team will transfuse between two and a half and four gallons of embalming fluid into the body. In Newcastle, Duckling’s team then places the donor in cold storage for six to eight weeks. Then it’s the donor’s time to shine: the university will use their body for research studies or medical education.

An important consideration here, Duckling says, is that in Newcastle, donors have the opportunity to decide how their body will be used when they first apply. Some donors could be used to test new surgical techniques. Others may be used to test drugs or study the science of decomposition. Some donors could be used as crash test dummies in automobile safety tests. Some donors, she adds, opt out of research studies and their bodies go straight to medical education. Medical students dissect bodies and gain invaluable hands-on experience on the internal variations between patients’ bodies.

In Newcastle, donors can also choose how long researchers can study their body. Some choose to let medical school preserve their bodies indefinitely. Others demand that the school return their bodies to their families after a specified period. “We then arrange for that donor to be cremated and the family to be contacted, and then the family can attend the funeral,” Duckling says.

Newcastle carefully cares for the donors while medical students study them. At least two staff members must be present in the room where the donor body or tissue is located, and access to body storage rooms is closely monitored and restricted.

Choose your donation service carefully

Potential donors should remember that Newcastle’s setup is not standard and the rules for body donation services vary widely. In the United States, most nonprofit body donation programs are affiliated with universities. You can see a list of programs by state here. Other services are for-profit. As time and speed of transportation are paramount factors when processing donors, these services are generally tied to geographic location. If you enroll in the University of California’s body donation program and then move to another state, the program asks you to unenroll and enroll in a local program.

A recent investigation of 72 body donation programs in the United States found that most programs did not allow donors to decide how long their bodies would be preserved. They also limited the ability of patients to opt out of certain types of research. This policy came under scrutiny when Dishonest, for-profit “body brokers” sent donors at the Department of Defense, where researchers shot them down or detonated them as part of ballistic or munitions tests. Naturally, this did not go down well with the donor families.

Even among nonprofit giving services in the United States, standardized regulation is minimal, meaning individual providers establish guidelines. Donors who want to ensure their bodies are used in tests that advance medical research or help educate doctors should choose their donation service carefully. Duckling says the motivations are more practical for some donors. “What we have discovered recently is that because of the cost of funerals, more and more people want to donate their bodies,” she explains.

White emphasizes that donating one’s body to science is extremely charitable, regardless of the donor’s intention. “During their tenure with us – we keep them for at least three years – they will work very hard and train over 3,000 healthcare professionals. This affects everyone from pharmacy students to medical students to speech therapists and dentists,” she says.

“The profound impact of our donors’ generosity will endure through knowledge that will benefit future generations,” says White. “Thanks to their selfless giving, many more will live. »

This story is part of the Popular Science book Ask Us Anything Serieswhere we answer your craziest and most burning questions, from the ordinary to the unusual. Do you have something you always wanted to know? Ask us.

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