Authors: Mary Roach
If I donated my body to science, my husband, Ed, would have to picture me on a lab table and, worse, picture all the things that might be done to me there. Many people would be fine with this. But Ed is squeamish about bodies, living or dead. This is a man who refuses to wear contacts because he'd have to touch his eyes. I have to limit my visits to the Surgery Channel for evenings when he's out of town. When I told him I was thinking about joining the Harvard Brain Bank a couple years back, he started shaking his head: "Ix-nay on the ainbank-bray."
Whatever Ed wants to do with me is what will be done with me. (The exception being organ donation. If I wind up brain-dead with usable parts, someone's going to use them, squeamishness be damned.) If Ed goes first, only then do I fill out the willed body form.
And if do, I will include a biographical note in my file for the students who dissect me (you can do this), so they can look down at my dilapidated hull and say, "Hey, check this. I got that woman who wrote a book about cadavers." And if there's any way I can arrange it, I'll make the thing wink.
Footnotes:
[
1]
If you live nearby, by all means donate. The Maxwell Museum holds the world's only collection of contemporary—within the last fifteen years—human bones, used to study everything from forensics to the skeletal manifestations of diseases. P.S.:Your family can go in and visit your bones, which the staff will lay out for you, though probably not in the shape of an all-together skeleton.
Acknowledgements
People who work with cadavers do not, as a general rule, enjoy the spotlight. Their work is misunderstood and their funding vulnerable to negative publicity. What follows is a group of people who had every reason not to return my calls, yet did. Commander Marlene DeMaio, Colonel John Baker, and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Harris, I salute your candor. Deb Marth, Albert King, John Cavanaugh, and the staff of the Wayne State impact lab, thank you for opening doors that don't often get opened. Rick Lowden, Dennis Shanahan, Arpad Vass, and Robert White, thank you for being charming and endlessly patient while I asked inane questions and used up entire afternoons of your time.
For helping make impossible things possible, I must thank the miraculous Sandy Wan, John Q. Owsley, Von Peterson, Hugh Patterson, and my pal Ron Walli. An especially warm thank-you to Susanne Wiigh-Masak and her family for putting up with me (and putting me up) for three days and nights. For sharing their time and tremendous knowledge, I thank Cindy Bir, Key Rey Chong, Dan Corcoran, Art Dalley, Nicole D'Ambrogio, Tim Evans, Roy Glover, John T. Greenwood, Don Huelke, Paul Israel, Gordon Kaye, Tyler Kress, Duncan MacPherson, Aris Makris, Theo Martinez, Kevin McCabe, Mack McMonigle, Bruce Latimer, Mehmet Oz, Terry Spracher, Jack Springer, Dennis Tobin, Ronn Wade, Mike Walsh, Med-O Whitson, Meg Winslow, and Frederick Zugibe.
A big hug to Jeff Greenwald for the support and martinis, to Laura Fraser for her unflagging enthusiasm, and to Steph Gold, who spent three days of her summer vacation with me in Haikou, China, when almost anywhere else would have been more fun. I thank Clark for being Clark, Lisa Margonelli for making me laugh when all was darkest, and Ed for loving a woman who writes about cadavers.
Special thanks must go to David Talbot, brave and brilliant founder of Salon.com, for getting the ball rolling, and to my smart and outrageously good agent, Jay Mandel. To my editor, the gifted poet and novelist Jill Bialosky, thank you endlessly for your patience, vision, and editorial grace. Every writer should be so fortunate.
And finally, my gratitude to UM 006, H, Mr. Blank, Ben, the big guy in the sweatpants, and the owners of the forty heads. You are dead, but you're not forgotten.
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