In the late 1980s, I worked for a transplant service, and participated in the harvesting of bones and tissue from recently deceased donors. As part of my training, I also toured gross anatomy labs. Generally, students are respectful of their cadavers, and most of them saw anatomy as a fun, learning experience.

At the time, many of my co-workers were body donors; these ladies persuaded me to sign up as a future body donor, as well. Personally, I have no problem with students and teaching assistants carving up my cadaver to learn anatomy — essentially, my memorial will be the skills that the future surgeons, and other physicians acquire from dissecting my cadaver.

Truthfully, I have no problem with my leftovers being hacked up for the incinerator, as Devyn describes. As the Bible says, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”; ultimately, my cremains will be commingled with the ashes of dozens of men and women who served as body donors. This final disposition is selfless, spiritual, and respectful of the environment, as every donor is buried directly into the soil.

Despite the unpleasantries associated with dissection, it is necessary for medical training and research, and medicine’s centuries-old “rites of passage”, gross anatomy, should be deemed an honor to all people who donate their bodies for dissection.

That was in about 1990, so she would have been teaching at that university for 40-some years. I am now teaching at a Catholic and historically Black university.

John, both BYU and my postdoctoral institution had the same rules Devyn mentioned respecting the cadavers.

Well, ARJ, I know I still feel quite spiritual.

John – there were very strict rules. No naming of cadavers, no joking about the bodies, etc. The students received a long lecture on respect and dignity for the cadavers at the first of the semester and we did not tolerate any deviation from that.

When I was a postdoc at a medical school, they hired me one semester to help teach the gross anatomy labs. They had a morgue on site, and I was able to watch the process of embalming and preparing cadavers for use in the lab.

The professor who freaked out was a bit of an odd duck. She had been at the university since the ’40s and was a couple of generations removed from other faculty, and the last remaining faculty member in the department without a Ph.D. I was more than a little surprised by her reaction. BYU undergraduates work (or used to) routinely with cadavers with no lawsuits that I know of, so it hadn’t remotely occurred to me that anyone would think there would be a problem. I think she just had some personal issues with it.

Last year, I was asked to help dress a brother in his temple robes for burial. He had Alzheimer’s and had been in a nursing home since I’ve been in the ward, so I had never met him. Then a few months later I had the opportunity to perform the same service for my father. Those definitely qualify as spiritual experiences.

Danithew and Howard – you certainly gain a respect and appreciation for the body when you have to stare at it for hours on end.

ARJ – does he get paid for that job??