Your body as a gift

Have you ever thought about your burial ceremony or what will happen with your body after passing away? I guess you not; at least, I hadn't until a year ago when my dad decided to sign an online request for body donors after reading an article about it. When he received the letter confirming his desire my whole family was in shock. I didn't even know that you could donate your body! We all were against my dad’s idea but, according to him, his corpse will be useless after the funeral and he didn’t want to be eaten by worms; for those reasons, he will give his body to the Universidad de Chile's Medical School.

These are some of the uses of
donated bodies for research.

The main reasons for donating your whole body or part of it to Science (tissues are also permitted), and why Universities want them, are three: 1) for anatomical research, allowing college students from Medical Schools examine and evaluate the body in detail; 2) to train surgeons and develop new surgery techniques, and 3) for research, in order to use them for scientific studies to improve the understanding of the human body. My dad isn’t that crazy after all!
Universidad de Chile is the only Institution that receives body donations in our country, and they use them for research, pedagogical purposes and to exhibit them in their Museum. If you are interested in give your remains as a present for research, you must consider two important points; sign a legal consent and think about being exposed and manipulated twenty years approximately!  

Even when I didn't understand my father's ambition since the beggining, I can say that now I gree with him. Perhaps I'm not going to donate my body (it's quite embarrasing!), but I comprehend the relevance of his future contribution to Science. 

What about you? Would you donate your body?

Look for futher information HERE!