November 30, 2005

• The Midwest offers ... an entirely new spectrum of plants, rodents and bugs, whose life cycle can provide clues about when someone was killed or when the body was dumped. I don't know... if they're just leaving bodies lying around in a fixed area, wouldn't the 172 coyotes hanging around bias the results? And if you put up a fence to keep it all out, that biases the results, too.
• I'd be willing to donate myself. Like a man in the first link said, how much nicer would it be to have your body propped up on a tree or something than to be put in a little dark box underground?
• This is an interesting book on a similar topic
• That's part of the point, rolypolyman. They want to see the exact process that leads to a body's decomposition. Bones can be scattered over a wide area thanks to coyotes or other scavengers, and their teeth marks help identify exactly what has happened to the bones, whether they're pre- , ante- or postmortem and how far postmortem. William Bass is a smart guy. He wrote a great book of anecdotes about forensic anthropology that was required reading for one of my classes.
• Wasn't this on CSI.
• And Dr. Bass had also mentioning wishing that another body farm could be established to better study different climates. This is great news. BTW, rolypolyman, "biases" are less important than accurately determining time of death and general decomposition. I wouldn't be surprised if they allow coyotes or other animals to scavenge the body for some experiments (vultures and other carrion birds do dine at the UT body farm--but some bodies are protected). However, the bugs are where it's at. Suddenly, I'm hungering for rice or better yet, couscous, I wonder why...
• Slightly OT, but here's a question for you monkeys. My mom totally (dead serious) wants this done with her body. She's got the paperwork. Now, I know I just basically said in the face transplant thread that once you're dead it doesn't matter what happens to your body in a good cause, but hypocrite that I am, this creeps me out. Her other plan if that doesn't pan out is to become a teaching cadaver. Would it bother anyone else to have someone they loved disposed of in one of these manners? Or am I just nuts?
• If your body is used in a teaching hospital/university, it is still cremated and the ashes sent to the family, so you still have the remains to bury or otherwise dispose of as you wish. I don't know if that's the case with body farm cadavers, though, as a lot of skeletal remains are kept for comparative work or teaching. I've considered it, especially if I were to die young, because teaching hospitals very rarely have the opportunity to learn from a young body; they usually get people who die of age-related diseases. The two I worked on in Anatomy were heart failure due to poor diet, and an Alzheimer's patient who had a stroke. Both died in their 80s. We treated them with utmost respect and the professors stressed very strongly the importance of donating oneself. As an aside, human skeletons used to be purchased from India: families of the deceased would sell the bodies to what were essentially skeleton exporters. If you get to study a real skeleton, you'll probably find it has characteristics typical of that ethnicity. Most skeletons in classrooms these days are casts, although you need real bones for the more specialised stuff, obviously.
• I understand that medical schools want bodies that are in fairly good shape. Apart from being dead, of course. The do not want you to be squished in an accident, or ravaged by metastasized cancer, or infected with AIDS. The body farm is likely to be much less choosy. It sounds like offering the body to the med school first and the body farm next would be a good way to go, if you wanted to do some good after your death. Do medical schools have the option of keeping the skeletons of the cadavers, and mounting them? When I was young my dad had a bag of human bones that he kept from his medical school days. It was fun playing with a spinal column, or the ribs. The very best deal was taking the skull to 5th grade, for show-and-tell.
• As one might imagine from my previous post or profile, I'm totally down with being propped up somewhere on the Body Farm. I've even thought of pursuing a masters in forensic anthro should my present career path not pan out. My girlfriend is less keen on both ideas however.
• Lara, Mr. Mickey wants to do the same thing. All for a very good cause, which is ultimately narrowing down time of death and may be crucial to solving a murder case. Maybe you could focus on your mom helping people? It would probably bother me more if I hadn't had so much time to get used to the idea.
• Actually, exposure of a dead body seems in some ways appropriate. It's pretty much what happened to our ancestors, millenia ago. ( the Parsis of India still practise it, though their method is much faster.) The problem with that as a common practice in this day and age would be that the smell of death would be pretty much everywhere. But the alternatives aren't really attractive, either. About 30 years ago, Esquire magazine had a very long article on what happens to a body in the common ways of dealing with it in the U.S. It was depressing, disgusting, and absolutely riveting. I don't remember everything they talked about, but none of the options were any better than exposure for scientific research or organ (including facial skin) donation. What I can recall of their discussion of burial: the body produces gasses which are trapped within the skin, but eventually build up and cause the body to explode. It then begins to leak fluids, and the underground undertakers (beetles, worms and the like) come in to feast on the rotting flesh. Not so different from body-farm exposure, really - but the process is not something the general public thinks about, or wants to think about.
• Most skeletons in classrooms these days are casts, although you need real bones for the more specialised stuff, obviously. We had a shwackload of different remains in my forensic anth class, including some bought from India. The methods of producing those remains is questionable at best, from what I understtod from my prof. And just to split hairs, tracicle: not ethnicity but ancestry can be determined from bones. It's a bit of a touchy subject; you can say what traits you share with ancestors, but not culture. For example African-Americans or the stolen children of Australian Aboriginal/Eurpoean descent don't share all the culture of their ancestors, but they do share all the genetics. I understand that medical schools want bodies that are in fairly good shape. Apart from being dead, of course. The do not want you to be squished in an accident, or ravaged by metastasized cancer, or infected with AIDS. It's really good to have those traits in any research cadaver. Especially when it comes to correlating osteological traits. The more evidence we have of osteological disease morphology from contemporary cadavers the better we can understand societies in the past, especially because those socielties leave no flesh behind and sometimes few bones. It'd be horrible to repeat academically accepted mistakes like those of Marcellin Boule [scroll down to La Chapelle-aux-Saints discovery] who claimed Neanderthals were more apelike than human with hunched postures unable to extend the knee fully simply because he didn't know how to identify arthritis or rickets on a skeleton.
• Yuk. This is sickening. When I'm gone, I want to be immediately cremated, with enough money left for a huge beer bash for my family and friends. I know enough forensic pathologists that truly understand the indignities a dead body is subject to. Until I see a legitimate reason for this macabre inquiry, I say it's a poor use of human remains. No thanks, maggots be damned.
• I am referring to bodies rotting in a field. We have enough of those already.
• Sorry, InsolentChimp, you're right. I was in a hurry and wrote ethnicity instead of ancestry. Must remember to use brain before typy-typy.
• My one remaining grandfather, who's grown a bit goofy, has announced that he wishes to donate his body to the University of Missouri when he dies. The kicker is that rather than having us go to any trouble, he just wants us to ice his body down and throw it in the back of a U-Haul truck, then drive that bad boy on to Columbia and drop him off. I can say with absolutely no hesitation that I want to be the man driving that truck. I will load a motorcycle and a cooler full of beer in the back next to him, and I and a three-legged dog will take him on a trip In Search Of America. Then I'll write a book and get me some of that Dave Eggers money.
• mct - my step father died a few years ago at the age of 90. He decided at some point that he wanted to be buried in the coffin-sized box he kept fire wood in. (He did love his Franklin stove. And his chain saw.) Unfortunately, the laws require caskets that can be sealed. We might have been able to find a work-around if he would have oked being cremated, but that wasn't an option. He wanted a regular burial, next to his second wife, which really pissed my mother (his third wife) off. Old curmudgeons are wonderful.
• Forgot to add that we did find a bronze Boots and Saddles casket in memorial of his romance with horses for most of his life. I think he would have liked it almost as well as the wood box.
• They could leave me rotting in a field. Hey, I've done it a few times already. I don't think Mrs K would be into that though. She gets a bit freaky whenever I remind her I'm on the organ doners list and they can have whatever they want from me (including my face, which is so darned handsome I bet there'll be a queue).
• When I go, I want to be put in a Kompogas plant. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, nitrogen to nitrogen.
• I really like this idea. I hope they have something analogous in my state when I die.
• MCT, maggots are ecological. . Unfortunately, the laws require caskets that can be sealed. Hmm, do you suppose the people who passed that law were unduly creeped out by the old "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out" kiddie gross-out ditty?
• I can say with absolutely no hesitation that I want to be the man driving that truck. I will load a motorcycle and a cooler full of beer in the back next to him, and I and a three-legged dog will take him on a trip In Search Of America. Then I'll write a book and get me some of that Dave Eggers money. Titled "You Shall Know the Velocity of my Travels with Grampa Charley", mct? Just be sure to include four pages of uninterrupted blank, canary-yellow paper in the middle of the book to simulate asking your grandfather a question in mid-trip. It's like a wave. Wheeeeee!
• Almost! You Shall Know the Velocity of my Travels with Grampa Charley On the Road
• Unfortunately, the laws require caskets that can be sealed. Ew. Do you suppose it's because embalming chemicals are scary enough to not be good in the water supply? Not snarking, just wondering. 'Cause if that's true, there's *another* reason to body farm myself out!
• Oh, our own SideDish wrote an article about body donation.