How to Donate Your Body to Science

It was very weird, and it wasn't like I was never sick. It was just I think it was a post nasal drip. Oh really, maybe from allergies or something. I don't know. Maybe it's weird. I just couldn't kick it. But I've kicked it. That's great, I can tell. Yeah. Uh, well, I hope you feel better even though you're not sick. Thanks. Man. I'm sure I'm not sick because if you were sick, you could possibly die and don't ate your body to science.

It's definitely true. I could, and I may I probably will. Yeah. When we did the organ donation podcast. Uh. Quite a number of years ago this came up, and I think we may have even said, let's do one on donating your whole body, and here it is, years later, promised. I can tell you that you me most decidedly wants to donate your body to science. Yeah. I think I do too. Yeah, it's it seems like a pretty great thing to do, agreed. Um, especially if by the time

we all kick the bucket. Um, they have a regulatory body overseeing this. It might be nice. It would be nice. It makes me feel a little better. Yeah. Yeah, Well they do point out the article like the thought of some people are just turned off by the thought of your body being cut up. Um, I don't care. No, I think that that is the first mental hurdle that you have to go past to say I think I will donate my body to side. People are going to be pouring over every part of your body naked while

you're dead on a table. And that's before they cut you open, pull everything out, cut your hand off, your feet, your head, all that stuff. Yeah, I think I would. Uh. I wonder if you can have a stipulation like to be covered and like have my privates covered. I have American stipulation. That's not it. You're like, I have a sock clause. Um. The other hurdle is uh, and I never really thought about this was people just thinking about

like jerk medical students, like joking around and stuff. So apparently that would be an enormous at least like doing it for the class. It's an ethical breach. From what I understand, it would be a very it's that's very taboo. It has taken very seriously. It's a very poor taste. Yeah. Um. And so if you say donate your body to a university and ends up being used for anatomical study, you

among m gross anatomy students. Right, Um, Probably they're going to know your name, they're going to know how you died. They're going to refer to you and talk to you by your name, so you will be a person to them. You're not just a cadaver. You know, there's a lump of meat. It sounds like they go out of their way to be very respectful of the what you've done for them. Right. They're they're taught to the the the instructors set that example. Um. I read about one I

can't remember the university. It's sound that. There's a link to it on the podcast page where um the instructor hold they they make like a very big point of pointing out that this is a gift. This person gave you medical students, the gift of their cadaver so that you can become a good doctor and save other people's lives to make money. This is a huge gift and

it's to be treated with respect. And also frequently most of these programs hold some sort of annual ceremony to kind of thank all of the people who um, just to honor them exactly the dead man. Yeah, it's pretty great that people get loaded. I can't find a date, no problem. So um, once you get past that hurdle, the the idea of being poked and prodded and looked at by medical students. Uh, there is another hurdle that people face two uh religious types at least that you're

some religions, um prohibit this kind of thing. Who do you know? Well Islam outright says no, you can't do that, like the body is not to be cut up or dissected or messed with after death. But they just said organ donations okay, And I didn't see that that was really under Sharia law. It doesn't look like you're supposed to do anything to the dead body except take care of it. Okay. I think that the stuff varies, though I guess the thing I what I ran across said like, no,

you can't. You definitely can't donate your body. It didn't say anything about donating organs, but from the context, it would seem like organ donation of be a no no as well. Jehovah's witness very famously do not accept or donate blood, transfusions, or any parts of blood um. They consider that blood is um. Basically, life is a gift from God and you are not to be messing with

it with blood. But if all of the blood is removed from the body to prevent it from being used for transfusions, that body is a okay to go to be donated to um, say like a medical school. As far as Jehovah's Witnesses are concerned, most other religions are like do it? Why would you not? Yeah? And I love how this article says Baptist. They break it down to like, I think the author may have been Baptist.

Do you think that's why I took because it's weirdest not to say Christianity as a whole and to break it down into denominations because he said Baptist and Catholic, to say it's an act of charity. I never heard that. I grew up Baptist. Oh maybe you missed that Sunday. I didn't miss any Sundays, my friend didn't. Nope. Uh,

there aren't any like hard and fast statistics. Because body donations can be donated to medical universities and colleges, to the US government, wait, private firms who cares what it's donated to. Surely there is a central authority that all couldaver donations go through. Isn't that nuts? I don't think so. It's totally nuts. Man. Think about it. Organ donation heavily regulated, lots of oversight. No money is exchanging hands, or if it is, it's like just the bare minimum. There's no

free market associated with this whatsoever. And everything goes through the central authority. There's, at least on paper, there's a group that knows everything that's going on, every organ that's being transplanted. Right, makes total sense. But when you talk about like bones, tendons, eyeballs, I don't know if those are organ donation or not, but whole bodies. This stuff is it's it's wrong to say that there is no regulation or oversight. There is. It's just not anywhere near

as strict as organ donation. It's not taking nearly as seriously well, I have a real problem with that. I don't have a problem with that. I think the reason why is because organ donations are being used to put into other people. You're not taking a whole body donated to science. It's only for purposes, that is what were they They actually use parts on other people, like what like bones, ligaments, tendons, but not like any sort of tissue or organ like from a cadaver. No, not the

organ itself. But they are taking like like say a bone from you, the dead guy who who donated your body. It might end up in a living recipient. And you may be like, totally fine with that. That's cool, right, I want to help somebody. I didn't think i'd be able to donate my organs, which is something we'll talk about later. So that's great, that's helping him out. My problem with it is is somebody may have profited from

your donation, and that's where my problem comes from. I think donating your body to science or free reuse in some way, shape or formance, going to help other people is wonderful. But the fact that there is a and there is not enough oversight or regulation, and that there is a free market that's associated with this because it's illegal to sell a body part, but you could say charge of handling fee, and they frequently do. It leads

to this free market embody parts. That but that starts out as a an act of love, a gift, a donation, and then somewhere down the line somebody can profit from that. That's horrible. But there is handling, Like transporting a body isn't free. There isn't. It's true. So this, this oversight committee or this this government agency should say, here's how much it costs. We know how much an airline charges. We have what we know how much it costs to

shipt a body. We know how much it get costs to take a piece of bone a femur from somebody and then transport it somewhere else. Right, here's how much for a bone. I totally disagree with that. I mean, let's think about organ procurement and like nobody's like there's a free gray market that's growing up. Over organ procurement, that's not what happens in this country. But when it comes to tissue and stuff like that, it's a problem. And it also here's the other thing, Chuck, It doesn't

just affect donors. It affects people who haven't donated their body because year after year after year, some news article comes up where some crematorium has been stealing body parts and selling them in this gray market. SAME's true for organs, though there's a black market. Yeah, it is true. I just have the impression that is it's much harder to do with organ procurement than it is with tissue, and and tissue, like a whole body donation is considered tissue.

So sorry about that's right. So, I think the sentence I was about to finish was there are somewhere around twenty whole bodies donated per year. Uh they think in the US, right, Yeah, But that's, like I said, uh, not an exact number, because like you said, there is no US government body watching all this, and so sounds like a pretty decent amount, right. Apparently, No, Apparently there

is a real um dearth of of cadavers. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize you can really donate your whole body, and probably the idea seems a little daunting or weird or whatever. So my hope is that just from us talking about this, more people will come to see it as something that's totally doable, because from what I ran across, it really is totally doable. Totally doable. All right, Well, we'll take a break here and when we come back, we will talk a little

bit about the history of whole body donation. Stop. All right, let's go back to the nineteenth century, early nineteenth century and uh and Briton, they're using animals a lot of times, or criminals, um, dead bodies of people that have been hanged. Well, yeah, that was the only way that you could get your hands on a cadaver as a medical school was if it was the body of an executed criminal. That's right, that was it. Or it's a pig or you know

some other animals. Right in a pig. Great, it's very satisfying to cut into a pig with the scalpel everybody knows they had. But you're not gonna learn as much about the human body from cutting open a pig as you would from cutting open a human body. So they decided they needed more bodies because the UMU capital crimes had had dropped, and so grave robbing became a common practice. And uh, it still is a common practice. I don't know about common, but it still happens in some parts

of the world. Back then they were called resurrectionists and UM, a lot of times it was slaves that were being having their graves robbed. Yeah, did you read the Smithsonian article I sent you. Yeah, I read that one. And then there's a documentary out to uh made by Dr Shaun Utsey of h Virginia Commonwealth University go Rams called Until the Well Runs Dry Medicine and the Exploitation of

Black bodies. And in it he talks about, um, someone named Chris Baker who was a famous resurrectionists in Virginia who would rob slave grades basically, and and it was robbing, but they still there wasn't a crime because slaves had no rights even after death right. And apparently they would employ slaves to do this because slaves couldn't be arrested for grave robbing slaves graves somehow, at least in Georgia. Well, yeah, because you sent in this other case of what was

his name, Grandison Harris. Yeah, he was Medical College of Georgia and Augusta. Then they discovered in nineteen nine and one of the old buildings of do you remember that a bunch of bones? Remember when that happened. I was in high school, dude, didn't watch the news. Were you like a tenth grader watching that was like eighth and ninth grade. I just remember. I was like what because when they found all these bones, they were like, what

is going on here? And then they figured out, oh, these were old anatomical specimens that had been robbed from the grave. Apparently he was employed because he was huge and strong and he could rob a grave by himself, which usually needed a few people to rob a grave. But he was an efficient gray rubbing machine and made a lot of money and educated himself and rose up somewhat in white society, but was not really accepted by

either whites or blacks. Yeah he he Uh. The Smithsonian article puts that he occupied a liminal place between black and white society. He was shunned by everybody, but also grudgingly respected and feared. Ye need article. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Um. And this Chris Baker apparently Dr Shaun Utsy says along with things like the Tuskegee experiments. He says that he thinks that medical college is accepting grave robbed bodies is of slaves is one of the reasons.

He says that, uh, some African Americans today have like lingering suspicions about doctors in general. Yeah, makes sense, um, And he says that that's a big reason that he feels like Black people die more of preventable disease because of a fear of doctors. Yeah, or maybe a mistrustum of doctors after things like the t Skee experiments and grave robbing of god slave graves. So it sort of

makes sense. So pretty interesting. He's the professor of UM, I think the head of African American studies at UVA or not uv A but Virginia COMMONWEALTHCU. So grave robbing became very very widespread, not just in the UK, but also an American I think you said, around the world, right, Yeah, and just deals being like if you ever watched the Nick, like the police make deals with the hospital, Like they find a body, they get little money on the side. It was just basically, how how can we get our

hands on a body? Exactly, and finally people figured out like, oh, well, this, this prohibition on dissecting human bodies is leading to grave robbing, which, now that we compared the two side by side, grave robbing is way worse. So, um, let's just make it if if somebody wants to donate their body or uh, we can let that happen, and that's that change happened. Let's set up a government branch to screw it up.

I'm telling you, man, Yeah, I don't know, man. Just for me personally, I just don't trust our government to handle something as nuanced and delicate as a part of the end of life industry. I just think it would be a typical, inefficient, bureaucratic nightmare, and that's the last thing people need when they're dealing with like the death of a family member. That's just me. I think the organ Procurement system network in place now is a sterling example of what could be done. It's great. Yeah, I

don't know too much about the financials behind it. Well, that's the thing, Like I agree with you, it does cost a certain amount of money to operate, but then you could have not for profit businesses running these things, right, So for a not for profit business still creates income, but that goes into the business that doesn't enrich shareholders or anything like that. Right, there's so with for profit companies, and there are I'm not slamming all for profit companies.

There are for profit Uh body donation companies out there that are great, right, But I'm just saying that the fact that that is allowed to me allows this free market in body parts that I don't think should exist. Uh. There is not one process because there's not one governing body. So it depends on who you're dealing with. Um, if it's a medical school, that's a good option, could be a government agency, could be a private group like you were talking about. But what you're gonna start out doing

is filling out a lot of paperwork. Uh. You need to make sure your family knows and is on board and that step be in your will and uh everyone's cool with all this. Yeah, because if you go in the mail clinic website and look how to donate your body, one of the things they say is if your next of kin opposes it, we're not going to accept your body. Well, it's just too much of a headache. Well, plus also I think they want to like, they don't want this

to be a traumatic experience. They want it. It's supposed to be a gift. You know. This donation of your whole body is supposed to be a gift, not supposed to put your next of kin through hell. And they don't want a headache. Let's be honest, man. UH, once you die, you are not guaranteed even if you want to donate your body, that you can have your body donated. You need to be in decent shape. There's a lot

of disease and things that they won't accept. HIV one or two, AIDS related deaths, help B or C symphilist kidney failure, jaundice, viral infections, bacteria infections, extensive trauma. Yeah, you can't be severely burned. They want you to be like basically a typical human being. You can't be too of weight. No, that's a that's a big one. Um. Some places, UH will only accept people up to like

a hundred and seventy undred ninety pounds for practical reasons. Yeah, embalming adds about a hundred pounds to you and they're gonna have to move you around if you're in an anatomy lab for a year. Some attendants are going to have to move you on and off gurneys and out in and out of the freezer for a whole year. And they don't want to deal with a four hundred pound couldaver when they can deal with two hundred fifty

pound cadavers. Yeah, they will also want to be able to find your organs very easily and not have to wade through lots of tissue. Yes, you know what I'm saying. Yep. So if you want to, if you're very serious about donating your body after death, you want to, that's a good reason to take care of yourself while you're alive. Also, and you can help this much less. But if you're emaciated, grossly emaciated, UM, you probably are not going to have your body accepted UM. And this brings up a really

important point. If your body is going to be rejected, which it very easily can be, UM, you need to have a plan in place for the disposition of your body should it come back to your family or more likely, they're not going to ship it into place. Isn't gonna just send it back, but they're they're going to call the place in the place, is gonna be like, we can't use you know, your relative, and now you are your family stuck with your dead body, which is not

a situation you want to put your family in. Yeah. I would God, I would hope that most people would think like, if this doesn't happen, then we can just creamate. Well the thing. They wouldn't be like, what do we do now? You know it's not like a sitcom. Yeah, well you could listen to our podcast Things to Do with the Dead Body? Right. Oh, I'm glad you bring that up. Because the Mayo clinic um uses uh alcohol, what does the alkaline hydrolysis, the one that turns into goo. Nice,

that's how they get rid of bodies. Uh, well, one positive thing. Actually, they'll stick another break here, okay, and we'll talk a little bit more about pros and cons of doing this right for this, so, Chuck, there were a couple more things like you were you were talking about the steps to donating your body, right, and they might not take you. If they do take you, um, it depends on what organization or company that you go with, right, that's right. One of the great things about a for

profit company is your family. If you're accepted and you probably will be accepted. They usually have the UM not the lowest standards, but the the the most leeway in accepting bodies. Can with the free market, you can shop around, okay, UM, see see who you feel most comfortable with. They are also the ones who are the least likely to UM put any costs onto your family, right, so they will pay for things like transportation. They will pay for cremation.

They will probably pay for the costs to return the cremated remains of you to your family because when they use your body, there eventually will be UM a cadaver there that is no use to them, and then will cremate that and send you the remains right UM. And they're also usually pretty quick with it because with UM, with a lot of the for profit companies UM, they basically cut you into the various parts and then ship those out and then they have the They do this

fairly quickly UM. And they take that leftover stuff and then bring your remains back to your family within a couple of weeks. With If you donate your body to say like a medical school, the medical school is gonna be like, thank you, this is very nice. UM, we need you to pay for some stuff, so transporting the body, which is why, um, a lot of people will donate to like their local medical medical school like Emory. Yeah.

So like if you live in Atlanta and you donate your body to Emory, Emory will probably pay to come pick it up. But if you died in Alabama and you had plans to um donate your body to Emory, your family might want to find a place in Alabama because Emory is gonna accept your body, but they're not gonna pay to get it to Atlanta. I don't think that medical schools in Alabama. Sorry, Alabama so mean and

like we're in Georgia. It's like right, you know, yeah, we're just so high on the hog I know, but Georgians are always like, well we're not Mississippi and Alabama not funny, not fair. It's a little funny like Alabama. So that is that is definitely a pro of a for profit companies. Like the costs associated with this donation are load and nonexistent. That's right. Um. Where so wherever your body goes, there's going to be some lots of paperwork to fill out. Your family is going to see

your body off at the funeral home. Maybe the funeral home, is going to is going to put it, put your body into a casket, it's going to get on an airplane, or it's going to go down the road to emery or whatever. And then, um, you will have no say whatsoever and what happens to it after that point? Is that always true? Pretty much? Yes? I figured there were some companies that allowed you some control. I don't think so.

I think that there are. UM. I have heard that you can opt to not be used for cosmetic surgery, but I don't. I didn't see that anywhere in research. Interesting. Um. One thing that some organizations allowed to do is to also be an organ donor. But generally they want your whole body with all its organs intact. But some will again because it's not you know, one single body, no pun intended. Uh. Some will allow you to donate your organs some organs first, and I only saw one that

does that, UM, which I thought was great. I didn't realize that you could do that. But the reason why they want all of your organs attact is because you're serving as a teaching tool for medical students who need to cut into these things. If you donate it to a medical school, right. Um. So oh that was another

thing too. If you donated to say like a medical school, you'll get your cremated remains back usually as well, um, but it could be it will be well over a year because they're going to use you for that year of medical school. Yeah. And y'all, you know you're gonna want to get right and your family get right with your ceremonies and how that's handled because either won't have your cream as or it might take a little while.

So just wrap your head around the fact that you're just gonna have a memorial service for your loved one that may not include remains. Um. And you know, some people still don't like that idea of like like they want a body there. Some people still need that closure of seeing the the the dead body sounds awful, but the problem is is that that is not going to happen if you donate your body, because you can't be

donated embalmed, so you are shipped fresh, freshly dead. Yeah, that's happened within a couple of days, Yeah, very quickly. And in fact, grave robbers when that was at its height. Um, people at some point in some graveyards used to their family would guard the body for three or four days until they figured it was you know, too late. You know, yeah, I think I remember hearing that. Man crazy huh, it

really is. Um. So the point is the first step to all this is to tell your family and then get it down on paper, either in an advanced directive or will or something like that, and then start looking around. Yeah and uh, since a lot of these organizations will pay for the remains and all that, like hopefully financial, it's not a purely financial consideration. But you can't save a lot of money by donating your body to science

because funerals and stuff like that is really expensive. That's right, chucking, Actually that is Um. There's a post on get rich Slowly dot com about donating your body to science to save money. Really yeah, and um, I mean it's it's a totally legitimate thing. The thing is is, um, you want to have a backup just in case your body is not accepted. You don't want to bet on the idea that you don't have to save anything for funeral costs because you're donating your body to science. Um. But yeah,

I mean, like funerals cost several thousand dollars. Apparently, according to this article. It was about a little under bucks in two thou twelve and that's the average UM. And then cremation is and up to six grand for a UM a cremation with funeral service and all the bells and whistles unless you bring your own coffee can and save money that way Glubowsky reference. So you can save all this money, especially if you go with a for private company, UM, and just give it to your errors instead.

You know, uh what else, Well, there are some I think we talked about the cons right, Yeah, maybe, um, they have a section to hear about creative ways to donate your body. Um, there are other things you can do. Yeah, you can do donate your body to be used as a crash test dummy. Well here's the thing. I don't think you really necessarily have say over that. Like I think when you donate your body you're donating it to potentially all this stuff in the US. I think you

can donate it. Maybe I'm wrong. I didn't look it up. I thought you could donate it directly to the n h T s A. I don't know. Maybe so, or you could like move to Michigan and make it that much more likely that it will be used by them. That's a good point. But they have they do use bodies of crash tests on me. Yeah, they still do. Um, there was a great there was a Wired article that was really good, and then I saw another one called the Driving Dead. Human cadaver is still used in car

crash testing. There's a place called the Laboratory of Technology and Systems for Safety and Automobiles. Is that at Wayne State. No, it's in Spain, uh in northern Spain, and it's one of six places in the world where they still use human body crash tests cadavers for crash tests. And it's been happening for a long time. In the car companies have distance themselves from it. They don't directly do it.

But what they do is they get the data from these places that do it right because they don't want to be directly tied to it. But four very famously in two thousand and eleven, I guess was testing an inflatable rear seat belt. So I guess they said, um, here's our rear seat belt. Why don't you see what happened, you know with cadavers, And the National Highway UM Safety Traffic Safety Administration says, oh, we know what you mean.

And so they get their hands on some cadavers and they wrap them up in body stockings, cover their faces as you see the pictures of that UM, and they run them through the rigors and then do autopsies afterwards to see what happened to the body after it was, you know, in this crash. Well, and you know, there's lots of advantages obviously, you can even though biomechanics and crash thees stummies now are like way better than they used to be. Um, nothing beats a body. Nothing beats

a body. You know, you can't tell what's really gonna happen to your internal organs. UM. It's also imperfect because there are no two cadavers that are the same, so it's not gonna be consistent. Also, cadavers are usually older and more fragile. UM. And also young cadavers are hard to come by because the highest rate of death among young people are car crashes. Yeah, a strange twist there

stuff to get young cadavers for that research. But there was a guy in the nineteen thirties named Wawrence Patrick from Wayne State University. I think you were talking about him, and he was somewhat of a He was the guy the crash test pilot. Yeah, Colonel Staff, he was sort of like him. He was his own test dummy and would just you know, throw himself downstairs and do all

sorts of stuff. And he even flung a cadaver down a university elevator chaft to test the strength of a human skull at one point and found like it can hold up, yeah, pretty good. So he was I think led the charge at Wayne State. And they still do work there with cadavers in highway safety, don't they. It's well, yeah, and it's so funny to me that this is like scandalous. Apparently some leak at GM started like talking to the media about how SAB was running tests using dead bodies.

It's like, that's a great use of a dead body to like save other people's lives. There's this article from a guy at Wayne State who wrote that could ever save abouts annually thanks to serving as crash test dummies. Um NASA actually used some as well, um to test the O Ryan capsule because it just isn't the same thing as using a robot or something like that, and they certainly don't want to put humans in their first live humans at least I don't understand why this is

at all scandalous. Again, I think donating your body is a fantastic thing to do. I think it could get scandalous and that, uh, which was what we're about to talk about here with the body's exhibits, is how these cadavers are sourced. Oh, that's where it gets scandalous. Uh. Well, that was one of the other creative things you can do if you want to donate your body to be

in one of those body exhibits. There are two main ones that I saw, um, Body Worlds and Bodies the exhibit the exhibit I can't remember which one the exhibition, sorry, thank you me? And I saw that one. Have you seen it? The one that's the one in Atlanta. It's based out of Atlanta. Actually it's astounding, It is astounding.

But they have been dogged by criticism because one group says that straight up, I think bodies the exhibition straight up says these are probably criminals from China, and we're gonna be straight up and say they're unclaimed bodies. The other one is Body Worlds UM and that's been in the US since two thousand four, and apparently they have death certificates. But the paper trail cuts off at a certain point, and they say it's with respect to anonymity.

But certain people have called them out and said, you know what, you should have a paper trail like you can't and equivocally say that these cadavers are all on the up and up? Can they? And um, they say they can. But they've come under a lot of fire, and those exhibits have in general because of where they get these bodies from. Well, now I feel dirty for having seen that. Yeah, yeah, I mean like it's disrespectful

to the dead. Well. In two thousand eight, uh, in New York, the Attorney General force Premier, which was the company behind I think Body Worlds, to put a disclaimer that said, this exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which are originally received by the Chinese Bureau Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you're viewing

are not those persons who are incarcerated in Chinese prisons. Uh. Yeah, So they forced them to put that up pretty pretty out there. They're putting it out there. They probably had that sign after you pay your money to go in. I doubt if it's by right beside the ticket booth. But apparently you can donate your body, although I don't know that you can because it sounds like they're not sourcing from you know, donating from the United States. Yeah. I saw somewhere that they have a list of like

twelve thousand living donors just waiting to donate their bodies. Yeah. Who knows what's real or true anymore? Who knows. Uh. The other thing you can do is what we talked about in our awesome classic episode on body Farms. Uh, if you want to help out forensics study, you can donate your body to the University of Tennessee go Valls, and you can be thrown out in the woods decomposed. Right did you just say go Valls? Really? I have to keep it consistent. That's cool, man. Yeah, the body

Farm episode was great. I think the only thing I can't say is go get G A G A T O R S, which is funny because, yeah, I don't blame me, but my family's from Tennessee, so I can root for most SEC teams except for the one in Florida. Does none of it matters anyway? Um, did you hear about the woman in New York whose body was accidentally donated for medical science and her family was like, what

did you do with grandma? And the New York Medical Examiner went, oh, I said, we planted a tree in her honor, right, which apparently is what some medical schools will do. They said, here's some money. We're really sorry. That was apparently very traumatic for the family. I imagine they said that that. Yeah, yeah, see, I'm not precious about after I'm dead. I'm not precious about the this lump of cells and skin that remains that to me, that nothing to me. I'm totally with you, man, I

totally agree to me. The only thing is somebody profiting off of a donation by anybody else what, no matter what it is, whether it's a body part or money, whatever, it's that's wrong. Yeah, respect my my spirit and who I was, not this dead carcass on the table. That's not me anymore, you know, that's right. I'm gone, buddy, I'm up there with with the highwaymen. Oh yeah, I'm flying a starship. Man. What else you got, uh? Skeleton?

The University of New Mexico and Albuquerque. I didn't look up their mascot, but you said none of it matters anyway, So I think they're the Lobos Lobos, I think so. Uh. They have a skeleton collection even though they aren't on display. No, and apparently the body farm in Tennessee, and that's we should say, not the only body farm. There's several, um, but the one in Tennessee will put you in their skeleton collection afterward as well. You can be you can

be very useful there. Maybe I would like to be We have a skeleton here at the house stuff works offices. I'd like to be put alongside him. Did you ever hear about the the skeleton of the Outlaw? I don't remember his name, but he was like a real live one of the last wild West outlaws UM in the early twentieth century, and his body was put on display by the coroner and the charge people in Nickel to

come look and sounds familiar from that. He uh he ended up never being buried and he ended up in like, uh, like one of those house of horrors that like one of the rides spook ride or whatever they call him, dark rides heard about that and um, it turned out that somebody like was cleaning them or something once decades later and like broke his hand off and realized, like, that's a bone, and may this isn't a wax dummy.

And they figured out somebody figured out who it was that it was this old criminal who was never buried and ended up in a real carnival ride. I remember hearing about that. That's crazy. Do you anything else? I got nothing else? You could be turned into collagen to be used for facelifts. Uh see, I don't want to

chase anybody away from this. I just think like I want everybody to flood the market with donated bodies so much so that like the price comes down and anybody who's in it too, like who's bodied part pirate, gets out of the business because it's not lucrative anymore. Bam. Uh. Since check doesn't have anything more, and I don't either. If you want to learn more about donating your body to science a very virtuous thing to do, you can type those words into search bar how stuff works dot com.

Since I said virtuous, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this underwater towns. Hey, guys, And you mentioned of an underwater town near you, and you caught my attention and how droughts work. I'm originally from the cat Skills, New York, where my family lived for a few generations, and I still lived there in the summer. The round

out Round Doubt, I'm not sure it's Round Doubt Reservoir. Uh. It's always fascinating me because when you drive around it takes a little time and you pass signs that read former site of Eureka, former site of Montella, former site of lack A Whack. After World War Two, with the huge influx of g I s into New York City and Long Island, more water was needed and the three towns were condemned and flooded to create the reservoir. A few years ago, my grandfather passed away and I became

interested in creating a family archive. One of the many interesting things among my grandparents photos, papers, and other items is the postcard that I sent to you. Uh picture that is. It's not signed, but, according to my grandma, was written by the postal employee of the town in the last days of Eureka. It mentions on the back that he's sending it in part because he thinks of my great grandfather Bruce might want to photo of the

mill that his father built. Uh. The Rondoubt is a water supply for New York City, so I wouldn't expect any Gulf globes to start breaking the surface if the water got low. But who knows. I have no idea who's down there. Pretty interesting story. Here's the postcard. Uh. I also think it's interesting. At the time, apparently only a name in town was required to send a postcard,

and that is from Patrick. Thanks Patrick. And it was pretty neat and I just think underwater towns or it's kind of sad and kind of cool all at the same time and creepy as long as you get people out of there. We oh yeah, well, desially they warned the residents first, I know, but you know how people are. They don't want to leave their homes. Oh well, whatever, they were warned. There you have it. Uh. If you want to get in touch with Chuck or me or whoever, you can tweet to s Y s K podcast. You

can join us on Facebook dot com. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast, to how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, joined us start at home on the web. Stuff You should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. M