Donating your body to science

Available for over a year

What do you want to happen to your body when you die? Cremation? Woodland Burial? Maybe you’ll have your ashes scattered at sea…perhaps you’d like to donate your body to science? Edinburgh outlaws, Burke and Hare made a living simply because cadavers were essential to anatomical education. Today cadavers are still essential to learning and research, the difference is today donating your body to science is a very different affair. In this edition of Brainwaves Pennie Latin looks into the who, what for and why of modern body donation. With extraordinary access to the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee, Pennie meets the medical students in the dissecting room who learn from the cadavers, the anatomists who use them for research and hears about the pioneering Thiel method of preservation that enables the cadavers to be used for a far wider range of research than traditional preservation techniques. Asking herself if she would donate her own body, Pennie sets out to discover what would happen to it. Her journey begins in the Val McDermid mortuary.