“Well, I think the best position you could have as a dead person would be the skeleton in the anatomy lab. Skeletons are sort of aesthetically beautiful. They’re not icky and decomposing in any way and they don’t smell funny. People can look at you and think, “Wow, that’s really cool.” You’re still there and helping out in your dead way. I’d have to say that would be my number one pick.
Plastination is another one. There’s a lab at the University of Michigan where they plastinate organs—essentially creating a hard, preserved plastic version. It’s a liver but the moisture has been replaced with this polymer that’s catalyzed and then hardens. You can pick it up and it doesn’t smell and it never decomposes. You can do a brain. You can even do a whole body. I think that would be my second choice. I could be happy as a spleen on a shelf.
In order to become a research cadaver you have to have filled out something called a “Willed Body” form for a particular university. Oftentimes it’s somebody who had surgery at a medical school or medical center and it saved their life and they feel grateful and want to give back to the school. You fill out this form saying, “I hereby bequeath my body…” to [insert name] university to do whatever they want with, essentially. Then you end up at an anatomy lab or on a research project. Very often you are parceled up. Your head will go one place, your liver might go someplace else. Nothing is wasted. Everyone wants a piece of you when you’re a research cadaver.”
Personally, i’m looking forward to this cool new alternative that sweden has come up with:
“I think that what’s been going on in Sweden – a new method of organic composting of remains, which are then used to grow a memorial plant – could catch on here eventually. Out in California first, of course. The body is frozen and then broken down via ultrasound into small pieces, which are then freeze-dried and buried in a biodegradable box, to become compost. The Swedes are perhaps more practical than we are, and certainly more environmentally aware. They don’t like frou-frou funerals or embalming, and they object to cremation because of the mercury from dental fillings that gets into the atmosphere. And in polls, they seem to very much like the idea of one’s molecules being directly taken up into a plant. Sort of a literal reincarnation. The inventor of the process has already spoken to people in the U.S. who are interested in licensing the process. It’ll be a while though. The machinery is still being tested.”
If you find yourself particularly interested, 8minutesaway, you can check out the book that this is from. Stiff by Mary Roach.
Another one that will change your perceptions forever is The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford.