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Bum rap
A new book accusing Pius XII of being "Hitler's Pope" overestimates the pontiff's influence and underestimates his character.
By Lawrence Osborne
[10/27/99]

Reviews
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman"
The new Richard Feynman collection is as illuminating, pleasurable and frustrating as the scientist himself.
By Edward Neuert
[10/27/99]

"From Hell"
Alan Moore, the Orson Welles of comics, delivers his darkest masterpiece yet.
By Curt Holman
[10/26/99]

Reviews
"Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings" by Jonathan Raban
A stunning account of a sea voyage, and a rare book set in the outdoors that isn't about a disaster.
By Scott Sutherland
[10/26/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
Could I have been any more inept?
First I fell for my wife's friend. Then I put it in writing. Now my life is sheer hell.
By Garrison Keillor
[10/26/99]

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Or can you?

Recent screw-ups and scandals -- the most recent involving a school official accused of selling body parts for pocket money -- have raised a red flag on the issue of whole body donations at universities across the country.

In 1996, a lawsuit against UCLA charged that as many as 18,000 bodies donated between 1950 and 1993 were cremated alongside dead lab animals and dumped in trash bins. In June of this year, a Dallas man who had donated his wife's body to the University of Texas Southwestern got a bewildering delivery in the mail -- a package -- sans explanation or warning -- containing his wife's ashes.

And in the most recent snafu, on Sept. 14 the University of California at Irvine fired Christopher Brown, director of the school's willed-body program, after he allegedly sold six human spines to a Phoenix research outfit for the tidy sum of $5,000. The check was made out to Health Medical Services, a group that university officials had never heard of. The Orange County district attorney has launched a criminal investigation, though Brown denies any wrongdoing.

UC-Irvine's Willed Body Program offers a solemn pledge to prospective donors: "As you consider the option of donating your body to science, know that the need is great and your gift will be valued and honored."

Naturally, some donor families are feeling double-crossed. Vince Craig, whose father's body went to UC-Irvine, told the Orange County Register, "We all thought we were doing such a good thing, but we feel like we were really walked all over."

In the wake of these embarrassments in California and Texas, the offending universities have sworn to shape up. UC-Irvine has pledged to revamp its program, tighten up record-keeping and add additional staff. Officials at UT's medical school have started notifying families by phone when their relatives' ashes are to be delivered by mail. And James G. Terwilliger, vice provost for administration at the UCLA School of Medicine, says the school has taken aggressive steps to correct its problems. "Today we are running a strong and well-run program," he told the Associated Press.

Still, all the body bungling is enough to make you think twice about entrusting your remains to a university. If you donate your body to science, will you end up as a black-market commodity for some crooked med-school bureaucrat, or waste away in a dumpster with the lab rats? When you consider the most recent news flashes on donation, the musty grave may look a little more inviting.

Students of anatomy since the time of ancient Egypt have been carving up cadavers to see what makes the human machine tick. Despite advances in computer modeling, almost all first-year med students are assigned a cadaver to dissect. Those cadavers have to come from somewhere, so willed-body programs abound at universities all over the country. Medical schools in 38 states have such programs, according to the UC-Irvine donor directory; in New York state alone, 13 schools accept bodies.

As Montana State University's body-donation Web site claims, "Medical education in this country requires more than 8,000 bodies yearly for training tomorrow's physicians."

Next page | Attend the university of your dreams -- as a corpse!