BOOKS

alright, this is going to be kind of a weird post, because first off, its about the book Stiff, by Mary Roach, which is about “the curious lives of human cadavers.” aka dead bodies.

second off…there’s just been a death in my family, so its kind of eerie to be talking about it. but i think its a good kind of eerie.

death has so many negative connotations these days, and while yes, it is terribly sad, but it isn’t the horrifically sad business a lot of people think it is. its all about hope, its pretty much the most hopeful thing you can do with your life, because by dying, you are placing your trust in whatever is beyond here to carry you safely to whatever is next. be it heaven, rebirth, becoming part of the earth, or moving on to another time and place, everything about death implies moving on to a better place.

so why does everyone freak out about using Human Cadavers for research, or using them for compost, or any of the other number of ways they have been used?

thats what Stiff is really about. or at least it was to me.

for a long time i thought i wanted to be cremated. i thought that decay is disgusting, and i don’t want to get sewn up and filled with fluids that aren’t mine just so my family can have a life-size doll of me to prop up for all my relatives and friends to cry over. i don’t need that.
so hell, why not light me on fire? my ideal used to be that i wanted my ashes put in a balloon, and then have that balloon filled with helium, and then released, then my ashes can be spread everywhere and anywhere, and i thought that was beautiful.

i think differently now. for a lot of reasons.

my opinion on burial still stands. i think embalming is a pointless thing to do. however, i now add cremation to the list of ways i do NOT want to go.
its actually really gross. a lot more disgusting than just plain decay. i won’t go into details, but there is a few paragraph description of what happens, and i don’t want that to happen just so i can get put in a balloon.
not to mention the fact that you can do so much good with a body, and i’d rather help those that are still living and can use my body, rather than selfishly keeping it for myself. i feel like burials and cremations just solidify the idea that a dead body is just a person who is heavily asleep, and isn’t waking up any times soon, the idea that a cadaver is still a person, with all the personality and feelings and emotions of a person.
it isn’t.

for a long time i’ve decided that in order to compromise for my love of meat (i could never be a vegetarian. give me a huge hunk of steak and i will devour it and enjoy every second of that dead cow flesh. gross, i know, but true. i admire people who can stop eating meat, because they stick to their principles. i don’t. sure little baby chickens are cute, but i have no qualms about eating their mommies and daddies for dinner.) i would advocate for the usage of all parts of the animals.
like, you’d use the cow meat for eating, the skin for leather and whatever else had uses you’d use it. i’m strictly in favor of the no-waste way of life (or at least i like to think i am. i’m actually really horrible for the environment. when i use public bathrooms i use like a thousand paper towels. oh well)

why shouldn’t it be the same for us?

why should we give our bodies all this respect when they aren’t even US anymore. a dead body is as human as any inanimate object you can think of. after we die, our bodies might as well just be considered another piece of furniture.
so why don’t we DO something about that, something to help the people left alive?

which brings me to one of the things i wouldn’t mind doing with my body:
ORGAN DONATION.
if my liver, my heart, my kidneys, my spleen, and whatever else can be used to keep someone’s spouse, parent, child, or friend alive, well…why not?
i’m sure as hell not going to be using any of it. its not like i need it in the afterlife. if i do…the afterlife has stupid rules.
i highly doubt that heaven is a “livers only” show.
and if you still want to get buried, you can be!
hell, you can even have an open casket. the part thats going to be cut open will be under the clothes, and your organs will have a second chance at life while you decay in the ground. its a win-win situation, really.
or you could get cremated too. either way works.

still want to help people, but don’t want your organs given to someone else?
well then there’s option deux:
ANATOMY CLASSES.

remember in science class, when you dissected a frog or a pig, or a cat or whatever? i know some people that dissected cows eyeballs in gradeschool, which is kind of gross. though i got to hold a cow heart, so i really can’t complain about cow eyeballs. (also the cow heart was practically the size of my little 3rd grade head.)
well…that was really kind of pointless. so i guess its a bad example.
or at least i think it was. we just had to dissect frogs AGAIN in my science class, and i don’t understand how that’s going to help my probable english major in the slightest, unless one of my professors calls for a creative writing piece about sticking my fingers in a frog’s mouth and body.

okay, but seriously folks, think about all the surgeons out there, all of the plastic surgeons, heart surgeons, brain surgeons…theres millions of ‘em.
do you think they got practice by poking around in a dead frog?
nope. a lot of them probably (hopefully) practiced on a human cadaver, and learned how the body works through an anatomy class using some random dead guy.

now before you dismiss this, calling it disgusting and repulsive and how you could NEVER do that because its YOUR body and what not…think about it.
you’re not using it. your family isn’t using it (in fact, if you die of old age, i’m sure they’d rather look at pictures of you in a memorial service, rather than some over-stuffed, dressed-up thing thats probably leaking fluids into the coffin, because i know i’d rather remember people how they were rather than have their death shoved in my face. sorry, i have a lot of opinions on this).
and now think about this:
would you rather students practice surgery techniques on LIVE humans?
that would be an outrage, right?
so why is it so bad to be doing it on dead humans? they’re not going to feel the pain if the student messes up, and everyone makes mistakes, so why not let them get the mistakes out on people who aren’t going to sue them for malpractice?

now, granted, anatomy classes using real bodies are somewhat on the outs. they’re working on using plastic models and virtual bodies and such, because dissection does really bother some people.

but i’m pretty sure they’re not completely done yet, and i think that a lot of teachers think theres a lot of value in using human bodies. hell, i think its a good idea.

so keep that in mind. bceause its a very respectful process, and its helping so many multitudes of people if you think about it.

and now comes the real “donating to science” part.
CRASH TEST DUMMIES!

well. not really.

but how do scientists know how certain car crashes and safety features affect LIVE humans, unless they practice on dead ones?
think of the inside of a car. think of the airbags, the seatbelts, the radio knobs, the steering wheel column.
without cadavers, we wouldn’t have those things.
…well, we wouldn’t have airbags or 3-point seatbelts, but we would have radio knobs and steering wheel columns, except you’d get stabbed by both.
without the use of cadaver tests, we would still have steering wheel columns that were just a rod with a wheel on it, and if you’re in a crash and are thrown forward?
lets just say that those steering wheels fold like paper and the rod is aimed almost perfectly to run through your heart and lungs.
yeah, survival isn’t a big chance with that, unless you’re made of stone.
even if you were made of stone, you’d get a pretty hefty dent in you.
and the radio knobs?
“autopsy files from the 1950’s and 1960’s contain more than a few X-ray images of human heads with radio knobs embedded in them.” (page 92)
thanks to cadaver research, we now have recessed radio knobs.
and do the bodies ask for thanks?
nope. they just continue being smashed into things for the safety of us living-types.

hows that for selfless.

there are countless other ways that bodies can be used, these are only a few.

and i know a lot of you (if any of you are still reading this, and aren’t too quesy yet) are probably thinking “WHY IN THE HELL WOULD I EVER READ THIS BOOK YOU CRAZY WOMAN??!!?”
first of all, because no one seems to know anything about processes like Embalming and burial or cremation and what-not, and if you’re oh-so concerned with what happens to your body, you should be a little bit more knowledgeable about the process you’re going to go through, rather than just doing it because thats what society tells you to do.

second of all, Mary Roach’s style is hilarious. she takes dead bodies and makes them hilarious, all while staying entirely respectful of the dead.
its quite difficult to be funny while writing a book about corpses and what happens to them, but Roach pulls it off fantastically well, while still staying informative and not crude.

now, i pretty much loathe all non-fiction, because it bores me to death (exceptions being anything by Chuck Klosterman or Augusten Burroughs, but they write more about their own lives, or about music, so its not like getting education shoved down your throat)
this book was FANTASTIC. despite being non-fiction, not to mention its about one of the creepiest topics ever.
i highly HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone and everyone

but don’t take my word for it, go out and read it yourself. i didn’t do the book nearly the justice it deserves.

so what do i want done with my body?
i plan to donate my body to science, and let them do with it what they will.
i figure scientists and surgeons know more about my body than i do, and will put it to good use.