What happens when you donate your body to science

I recently took a pretty deep dive into a topic that has fascinated me for a long time: donating a body to science. I wanted to know about the whole process, how the bodies are used, and how things can go wrong. The result is a feature that, honestly, I’m really proud of. Here’s the beginning:

Rebecca George doesn’t mind the vultures. They remind her of toddlers as they rustle their feathers in annoyance when she opens the gate of the Western Carolina University body farm early one July morning. Her arrival has interrupted their breakfast. George studies human decomposition, and part of decomposing is becoming food. Scavengers are welcome. 

The birds complain from the trees that surround the body farm as George, a forensic anthropologist, begins her main task of the day: placing the body of a donor, whom we’ll call Donor X, in the Forensic Osteology Research Station—known as the FOREST. The enclosure sits on a steep incline in North Carolina’s temperate rainforest, surrounded by two layers of protective fencing. This is Enclosure One, where donors decompose naturally above ground. Just on the other side of the clearing is Enclosure Two, where researchers study bodies that have been buried in soil. She is the facility’s curator, a member of a small team of forensic anthropologists and university students who monitor the donors—sometimes for years—as they become nothing but bones. 

George places Donor X on their back just inside the enclosure gates, hands at their sides. Unless donors are part of a specific study requiring clothes, they’re laid out “in their birthday suit.” Clothing slows decomposition. She sticks a little yellow flag next to the body with an ID number and the date. Another donor is nearby, one skeletonized hand gently resting on a small rock, head tilted to the right, as if they were sleeping. 

[Read More at Technology Review]