Would you leave your body to medical science?

In my 'Get the Retirement You Deserve' Home Study Course, one of the things I ask the reader to do is to give some consideration to their non-financial legacy - in other words, what they want to leave behind and/or be remembered for after they've shuffled off this mortal coil.  Some of the examples I give to get people thinking about this subject are: registering for organ donation, compiling a family tree to help future generations know their roots, and leaving their body to medical science.  Which is why a Mail Online article caught my eye this morning...

Have you ever considered leaving your body to medical science?  Here in the UK, there is, apparently, a national shortage of cadavers - it's estimated that only 600 bodies were received in 2008 and there are more than 45,000 trainee doctors, dentists and surgeons at any one time.  

After reading this article by Tessa Dunlop, whose father decided to donate his own body after he was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow cancer, I'm persuaded to investigate this subject further.  After all, as Tessa points out, "Students have to learn somewhere – better surely to make mistakes on the dead rather than the living?".

What do you think?  Feel free to leave a comment below...

Comments

[Anne Maxfield]

The only problem is that if you want to be an organ donor, in the US the two are usually mutually exclusive. I always thought you could just recycle yourself, but not so easy. http://www.itsallaboutaging.com/blog/?p=783

[Ann Harrison]

That's interesting... I wonder if that's the case here in the UK as well. Further investigation is obviously needed!

Ann