This story was originally published in our Sept/Oct 2023 issue as "Bone Keepers." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
You can donate your someday-dead self to science. Just sign before witnesses at the bottom of a consent form laden with legalese: “Being age eighteen years or over, and of sound mind and under no duress or coercion, I hereby voluntarily offer as an unrestricted gift, my body, after death, for education, research and the advancement of science.”
So begins the three-page consent for the anatomical gift program at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
Each year around 100 adults sign that form, volunteering to become cadavers that will be dissected by UMass med students during their anatomy classes or probed by scientists developing medical devices. Nationwide, around 20,000 individuals in the U.S. gift their bodies to scientific research and education annually.
