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Monday, Dec 1, 2008
After I die, I want maggots to eat away my flesh so my skeleton can be used for research purposes.
Aug 28, 2000 | I'm sitting in Susan Wallace's Baylor University lab, where human skulls and bones decorate counters, and flesh-eating insects adorn glass cases. It's mid-September 1999, and I have traveled to Waco, Texas, from Milwaukee so she can show me examples of how to properly rid skeletons of their flesh. To demonstrate, Wallace lifts a meaty red pig spine out of a glass box. Fat maggots, hard at work, cover the spine. Wallace, who isn't wearing gloves, flicks the maggots off the spine using a dental probe. She then reaches over to hand me a lower human jaw with one gold molar. The 50-year-old forensic anthropologist doesn't even pause as she does all this, enabling us to continue talking about our common passion -- donating our skeletons for anatomical study -- without so much as skipping a syllable.
You may be thinking all we'd need to do is contact the closest medical school. This isn't the case. Although many people donate their bodies each year to science, it is not easy to salvage their skeletons for research purposes. As Roger Haushalter, anatomical curator of the Medical College of Wisconsin, explained to me, bodies donated to science have the "flesh cemented to the bone in the embalming process." If a gross anatomy lab wanted a skeleton, it would have to neutralize the formaldehyde, use bugs or chemicals to clean the flesh away and carefully wire the bones back together again. Even then, the bones, degraded by formaldehyde, would be inferior specimens. This is why most cadavers end up being cremated.
In 1985, India banned the export of skeletons to foreign countries. Before this, it was the supplier of more than 80 percent of the world's human skulls and skeletons. There is a shortage in the United States as a result. Doctors and those studying the fine anatomical details of skeletons worry about a generation of medical and dental students relying increasingly on plastic replicas instead of the real thing to learn about bones and how disease affects them. The Medical College of Wisconsin's collection, for example, has dwindled over the last 15 years from 20 skeletons to six. Studying real skeletons help doctors understand everything from how certain cancers attack the bone to diagnosing rickets more accurately. It also helps physical therapists, forensic pathologists, physical anthropologists and even art students in their work. Companies who design surgical and prosthetic equipment are also aided by real skeletons.
"So much detail is lost with plastic replicas," Wallace says as she explains the difference between the two. "Characteristics unique to each individual are not visible, thus limiting the information a student can learn from examining the bones." No one has yet to develop a way to mold a realistic plastic reproduction. The tiny canals in the cranium, and the fine bones in the nasal passage are among the most difficult to copy.
Hugh A. Patterson feels the skeleton shortage firsthand. The University of California at San Francisco anatomy professor says that although he would like to buy more skeletons for his students, he can't afford it. "The costs are prohibitive," he says. Skeletons before 1985 cost under $500, but with this crisis, they are now retailing for more than $2,000. Instead, he keeps repairing the school's badly worn specimens. Ever since India banned their export and exposed the world to how many skeletons are reportedly obtained -- through practices like grave robbing, instead of donation -- many researchers are wary to add to their university's collections. "I question whether the source of replacement skeletons is legitimate and ethical because most skeletons are imported from other countries," Patterson says.
There is no clearinghouse for skeletons in the United States. And Wallace and I are devoted to establishing one. No, we're not morbid, and we don't have that big of a fascination with death, but we believe if we were to set up a place, others could donate their skeleton for research purposes with greater ease. We hope this will also assuage the skeletal shortage and ensure that the skeletons that end up in our labs and classrooms aren't ones obtained through grave robbing.
The facility would publicize the need for donors, accept donated bodies, process them, maintain a registry and distribute skeletons to educational institutions. Without the current practice of imported skeletons passing through a series of suppliers, each tacking on overhead charges, the price of skeletons would come down substantially.
Right now, this site is just a dream of mine, and not a dream I ever imagined having. Like many others, I never thought about skeletons much, except during Halloween, until I started art modeling part-time at colleges around Milwaukee in the '90s. During figure-drawing classes devoted to anatomy, instructors often use live models as well as skeletons to illustrate their lectures. I found the uniform, Rubbermaid-white plastic facsimiles lifeless, but I developed a collegial fondness for real skeletons, with their diversity of color, texture and form. Then, at a retirement party for a local art model, he mentioned planning to bequeath his skeleton to an art school after he died so art students could continue drawing him. The idea sounded good to me too.
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