Last wishes

(I'm writing this before Obama's acceptance speech tonight).

We just watched a Modern Marvels program (on the History Channel) called Corpse Watch. They covered various options of what can be done with a body after the original owner dies. It started with the Body Farm (Anthropology Research Facility) at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This is the facility made famous by Patricia Cornwell's novel, but had been in operation (since 1981) before she started writing about it. Donated bodies are left to decompose in various conditions. The processes are studied and documented so investigators can use the data to determine information about another body by using its physical condition.

Portions of bodies can be donated for organ and tissue transplants. There are over 200 portions of a body that can now be used for transplant purposes. Organs (heart, kidneys, liver, corneas, etc.) must be transplanted immediately, of course. But "parts" like bones, ligaments, tendons, veins, valves, skin, nerves, etc., can be frozen for later use.

We are probably most familiar with western traditional burials involve sophisticated embalming techniques, caskets, vaults, cemeteries, etc. Cremation is becoming more common, for a variety of reasons. Crematoria in the US use extremely high heat to reduce the body and coffin to ash. Ashes have been buried, scattered, kept on mantels - use your imagination. There's now a company that will place ashes in a cement framework on the ocean floor, part of an artificial reef. Ashes have even been shot into space. In India, bodies are burned on pyres of wood along the Ganges River, with the ashes scattered into the river. According to the program, this uses an incredible number of trees each year.

Bodies can be donated to medical schools for anatomy classes for medical students. This is an invaluable gift to allow students to learn the human topography first hand.

There's a cemetery near San Francisco that offers "green" burials. Bodies are not chemically embalmed, and may be buried in biodegradable caskets or in shrouds. They are allowed to return to the earth (the old "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" thing).

There are an incredible number of options for what to do with your body. Have you decided what you'd want done? Have you told your spouse, significant other, your children, and/or your doctor? Have you written it down? Better do that - if you don't, nobody will know what you want. Of course, nothing is legally binding, and your survivors certainly have the last word. But you'd probably like to have some input into the decision.

Personally, my living will states that I'd like any and all usable parts to be harvested for transplantation and/or tissue banks, with the remainder to be cremated and the ashes disposed of as my survivors choose (although I may come up with further instructions later on). What are your plans?