Writer@Large

I in no way want to derail alek0's thread, so I'm taking this here, and tacking a completely unscientific poll to it. Discuss:

Nontheists: are you donating your body or organs when you die? Why or why not?

Theists: are you donating your body or organs when you die? Why or why not?

I used to have a possessive thing about my body, and for years after getting my driver's license I wouldn't sign the organ doner space on the back. For the life of me, nowadays, I can't explain why, except that the idea of people getting my organs when I died was "creepy." It wasn't until after I graduated college that I changed my mind. I honestly think that education, and science, and my atheism, have actually *helped* convince me to donate my organs (or my entire body, if they'll take it, to the Body Farm). I recognize that once I'm gone my body becomes a rotting hunk of organic matter; I'm never going to return to it, I don't take it with me into the next world, its never going to rise up on some mythical "Judgement Day" ... and if it rises up as a brain-eating zombie, hopefully all those missing parts will make it easier to take down. So why shouldn't the living make the best use out of my corpse that they can?

In fact, I don't even want a burial. Not only is the entire funerary industry a rip-off scam, but I think that preseving a plot of land that could be used for agriculture, industry, or even wilderness reclamation is a huge waste. I'm opting for cremation in the cheapest pine box my wife or future children can get me. One should be remembered in the hearts and minds of their loved ones, and in the deeds they accomplish on this Earth, not at a stone marker marking the place where they rotted.

--W@L

pz

I've signed an organ donor card. I've also told my family that any use they can find for my corpse is better than just burning or burying it -- donate it to a med school.

I should mention that many med schools also have a nice policy that they'll take the body, use it for a year or two, and then cremate what's left and return it to your family. You can get free cremation, and also get your family a lovely box of ashes that they can use to fertilize the tomato beds.

lisarea

I've never had a problem with organs used for transplants and research and such, but, all reason goes out the window for me when it comes to things like:

Body farms. My excuse? I hate flies. I think they're despicable creatures, and I never want to be a breeding grounds for them.

Medical school hijinks. I do NOT want my severed head showing up in someone's backpack, even if I do happen to be dead at the time.

Mummies. I would fucking hate to be mummified. I remember hearing some story that I haven't been able to locate again about Evita Peron's mummified remains going missing for a bunch of years and then being found one day riding the subways in NYC. It's probably apocryphal, but boy did that give me the screaming mimis.

I realize this is silly, mostly, but a lot of it does have to do with survivors. Whenever I see some crime scene photo or hear some gross out story involving someone's death, the very first thing I think of is, "Shit. That's someone's mother/brother/father/son/love of their life," reduced to fodder for puerile jokes and shock value. I guess I just wouldn't want to think that my friends and family would have to be left with these gruesome images nagging at them.

As far as I'm concerned, they can harvest any organs they want to use, and then toss the husk in the incinerator. After that, I don't care. Whoever's left behind can put me in some fireworks, flush me down the toilet, or throw me in some unsavory politician's face. I don't care.

meritocrat

I don't think I would like to donate my organs after death. The reasons for believing this are personal.

sakrilege

I understand calcium reduces the incidence of blossom end rot.


My driver's license has an organ donation sticker on it.

christ-on-a-stick

(atheist here) - I am unfortunately not a suitable organ donor - apparently (this is what my doctor told me anyway) due to having contracted malaria, I am not allowed to give blood or donate organs for transplant. I am forever infected or something.

However, I have made my wishes clear to my husband and family (although I should probably put it in writing) that I would be more than happy for any other usable items to be donated (skin/tissue/bone?) and/or "Body Farm"-ed or used for medical research. I was not aware of this as posted by pz but it sounds like a nice plan to me.

In any case I definitely want to *end up* cremated. Burial (especially embalming) is a weird concept to me.

Thalia

Although most of us can donate tissues, organs can only be taken from people who die in a certain way, usually those of us who die from brain death before cessation of cardiopulmonary function. So most of us will not have the opportunity to donate organs. Currently, only half of the people who die in the proper manner are donors, either bc they didn't consent while living or their family doesn't.
It is very, very important to talk to your family because they can override your decision. The only way to avoid this is to write a living will declaring someone who is OK with your decision as a durable power of attorney for you.

beth

I will donate, but my family will want a service for me. I requested that my remains be cremated after service, I think I'll get that. I do not want to turn into a soap mummy. I also hope that I die in a peaceful, non-mysterious way so that I will not have to be autopsied. I want no person making jokes about my corpse....As to body farms, HELL NO! Last think I want is to have my corpse rotting in a vat of water to examine rate of decay. ICK! Or lie on the ground somewhere with a sheet over me a let vermen eat me, so that they can study my half eaten corpse, just so their morbid curiousity can be satified. No medical school can get me, either. I do not want to be the body that the students disect for the next year or two.

pz

Oh, come on. Horrible things will happen to your corpse after you are dead, no matter what option you choose.

Although I'm at an undergraduate institution, we also get a cadaver every year or two for our anatomy course -- it's in a big stainless steel coffin across the hall from me right now. When it gets unveiled to the new class each year, you get the usual range of responses at first: morbid fascination, gallows humor, horror, some weak knees and even nausea. After that, though, everyone settles down and all you've got is curiousity, appreciation, and respect. The stuff people have got inside them is just amazing.

Although I can understand some of those students who react to the cadaver with humor (it's a way to ease tensions, after all), I tend to come down pretty hard on anyone who gets sophomoric with it, as does the instructor for that course. If you were to specifically donate your body to the University of Minnesota, I can pretty much guarantee it a respectful reception and that it will awe and instruct several hundred students. That should be true of every institution.

wildernesse

I have signed for my organs to be donated. I don't think that I would want to be poked at in a medical school, and I've never thought about being part of a decay study (although, the thought is really interesting!).

I won't need my organs after I'm dead. I don't want to be cremated, just because. And I'd like to have a memorial stone somewhere (a really big one, with all kinds of poems and stuff carved into it). I don't want to be in a memorial "garden", but a graveyard or cemetary or something.

My parents used to joke that they were going to the taxidermist's and then be set up in our house like a museum exhibit. And my father is against organ donation--not for religious reasons, but because he distrusts the medical profession's ethics (along the lines of: rich man down the hall needs a lung, and some stupid potential organ donor's down the hall, maybe they'll have some kind of "rare" complication and ta-da! fresh organs for the rich man).

--tibac