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People intending to leave their bodies to science might find they bump up against weight limits, especially given America's growing girth.
It’s a rare day when Richard Drake turns down a dead body, but last week, he had no choice.
At 6-foot-1 and 350 pounds, the deceased in question was simply too big for the Cleveland Clinic Body Donation Program, which provides specimens for anatomy classes at the Lerner College of Medicine and elsewhere.
“Someone that’s shorter and carrying a lot of weight, that is a problem,” said Drake, director of anatomy and a professor of surgery. “The storage is one issue, but when you are obese, there’s a lot of tissue everywhere. The students don’t get as good a learning opportunity.”
Reluctantly, Drake informed the dead man’s family he’d have to turn down the donation request because their loved one exceeded the size limits for medical research.
“They understood that, because, actually, they had tried a few other places,” Drake said. “They were sort of checking around.”
In a country where more than a third of adults are obese, the impact of extra weight extends, it seems, even beyond death.
Officials at some whole body donation programs in the United States tell msnbc.com they’ve turned away corpses that are too fat for scientific study. Others say the bigger issue is that potential donors simply don’t sign up once they learn of weight limits that can be as low as 170 pounds, but generally top out at 300 pounds.
“Family members, or the person themselves, sometimes they’re a little taken aback,” said Stephen D. Anderson, coordinator of the Willed Body Program at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky. “They didn’t assume there were any restrictions.”
That surprise could be a problem, considering that a 2004 Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study found that about half of adults surveyed would consider donating their bodies to science.
But officials at the university-affiliated programs that supply perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 dead bodies each year to the nation’s nearly 140 medical schools say that weight and height limits are an unavoidable part of the process.
“The embalming process adds considerable weight. Generally, a 250-pound person might weigh 350 to 400 pounds when embalmed,” said Richard Dey, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at West Virginia University in Morgantown. His program receives about 275 bodies a year and turns away at least a few.
To be frank, bodies taller than about 6-foot-4 or heavier than about 300 pounds simply don’t fit on the trays that are sometimes stacked six high in the coolers where the deceased are kept, experts say.
It can be difficult for technicians to handle huge corpses, which have to be lifted and transferred frequently, often by slim technicians or students, said John Lee Powers, curator of anatomical materials at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. That program limits donors to between 170 pounds and 180 pounds, though an exceptionally tall donor might be allowed at 190.
“It’s the maximum our equipment will handle,” Powers said.
There’s also the educational aspect to consider. Donated bodies are used primarily for first-year anatomy students, who need to learn how the human body is supposed to look, said Ronn Wade, director of the Anatomical Services Division of the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore.
Bioethicist: A final reason to lose weight
“In a perfect world, they’d like to have a perfect body with perfect anatomy -- or near perfect,” said Wade, whose program is among the largest in the nation, with a peak donation of some 1,800 bodies a year.
Studying obesity and other pathologies can come later, once students are familiar with the basics, he added.
Obese bodies are more difficult, time-consuming and unpleasant to study, said Wade, who also heads his state’s anatomy board.
“Basically it’s having to get at the structures you want to see,” he said. “Between the skin and the rest, there’s layers and layers of fat cells.”
Only about a quarter of the bodies Wade receives meet the ideal criteria, he said. Perhaps 5 percent of them are morbidly obese.
Wade generally doesn’t reject them outright. But they won’t be used by medical students in first-year classes. They might wind up as clinical specimens used for practice by paramedics or other medical professionals. Some obese bodies can't be used at all, so they're simply cremated and the remains are returned to the families -- without ever serving any research purpose.
So far, medical schools are still able to get enough lean bodies for students to use, experts said. Some programs use corpses from for-profit tissue brokers, which are loosely regulated and supply an unknown number of bodies each year.
Still, considering America’s growing girth, some experts are worried about the future.
Anderson, the director of the University of Louisville program, says he can’t use about 10 percent of the 175 to 200 bodies donated each year because of size problems.
He said he’s thought about upping the program’s weight limit from 200 pounds to 250 pounds to ensure a steady supply.
“If we keep it at 200, we may see that we’re turning down potential donors because of that,” he said.
Having to turn down any willing donor is a shame, said Drake, the Cleveland Clinic expert who is also an officer with the American Association of Anatomists. He doubted the family of the 6-foot-1, 350-pound man would find a program to accept his remains. Instead, they likely had to make other arrangements for the man’s disposition.
“It is an emotional thing,” he said. “People really do want to do this.”
That was the case for the mother of Tara Parker-Pope, a New York Times health reporter who recently wrote about the struggle to lose weight and keep it off, both in her own family and in the population at large.
“My mother died of esophageal cancer six years ago,” Parker-Pope wrote. “It was her great regret that in the days before she died, the closest medical school turned down her offer to donate her body because she was obese.”
Those who leave their remains to science tend to be sensitive folks interested in enhancing the public good, said Wade, the Maryland expert who has promoted whole body donation for more than 35 years.
At the end of a life perhaps spent struggling with weight, learning they’re too heavy to fulfill those altruistic wishes can be devastating.
“It’s kind of another stigma,” said Wade. “They kind of feel victimized.”
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Leave a Comment:
There needs to be a program where unused bodies can be used for live fire exercises. I'd probably sign my body up for that.
Well, speaking as a medical doctor, I don't want to see these porkers when they're alive. They are generally more prone to disease, they are all diabetic and will eventually get their renal failure or heart disease - in addition they have a much higher complication rate from even simple surgeries, and they can always find a sleaze bag attorney to sue for malpractice when anything goes wrong.
You should seriously consider throwing dough in the air with Herman Cain as a new career.
So much for the Hippocratic Oath. You must be one of those sleaze bag doctors to help those sleaze bad attorneys.
I don't get it Airborne....I would think you would relish seeing these porkers...wouldn't that mean more money for you??? So you can run your bullsheet tests and speculate and still not figure out what's wrong with someone. Your attitude sucks, I'm sure you're not even a doctor, or even in pre med. You sound more like a slimy lawyer.
Certainly not a doctor that I would want to see.
I am already signed up for full body donation with a medical university. It seems there are different rules for different ones. Mine won't allow any embalming, autopsy, severe accident wounds, immune diseases, but put no restrictions on weight except they don't want extreme emaciation. They want the body fresh, un-embalmed, within 48 hours of death.
Rejected in death as well as in life. What's next? Kicked out of Heaven to be trashed in the other place? Maybe the Hindus have it right with their caste system only judge by BMI and not by birth; oh weight, obesity can be genetic.
How do they expect to study the diseases, conditions and other problems of the obese if they do not have the tools (cadavers and parts) to do so?
Another way people can donate is for forensics research. I'm not sure if they have weight limits, but it could be another option.Crime investigators need to know how a body decomposes to solve certain crimes.
Body farm!
this is really bull@!$%#
If overweight people are going to be your patient base, then, I would think that practicing on the overwieght would be benificial.
While I get why the limitations are put into place the issue is still a little confusing. Wouldn't it be reasonable that these med students or wghoever at some point in their careers will run across someone who is obese or has unhealthy organs? Wouldn't learning about people of there stature and the differences between their body and a normal body be something that would need to consider learning about? I'm just asking.
what is crazy about this is because im skinny are they gonna steal my body from my grave to dissect me because 50% of our population is overwieght. And the reason you are fat is because you overeat and do not exersize. I can eat the exact same food as you and stay skinny why because in the productive job that i do im on my feet all day in the unproductive jobs 50% of americans have they sit around and go home and sit around and wonder why they get bigger and bigger. The movie Walle is a good example of how you fat people would love to live your life.(in a mobile chair that takes you everywhere and you never have to get off your fat ass, while you blame some false statements that you are genetically fat.) The funniest part about fat people and them not losing wieght is all you have to do is walk for 8 hours a day and in 6 months people would not recognize you because your body naturally thins itself out when you use it how it was designed.
No one would steal your body with such venom running through your veins. Yes, all kinds of people make all kinds of excuses for various things in their lives. Attacking people verbally will create no good for society or ourselves.
Wow......
Vegetarians: Since blood is changed during the embalming process, the venom would be lost anyway. Heck if they are recycling waste-water in the West and Gulf States why not Vegetarians' Bodies.
While organ donations perform an indispensable service in saving lives, the donors are limited by the number of usable organs they may donate. When I signed up for the cadaver program, I felt by helping to train an unknown number of doctors, I might actually be doing more good. Not trying to take away from organ donors at all, both programs are vital.
they are using the bodies to help with the teaching of Med students and they only want average height and skinny donors? that seems to be teaching those that go on to be specialists (surgery) to only be able to correctly work on short/skinny people and that just seems wrong.
If you read the article it states that they prefer "thinner/skinnier" bodies for the first year medical students because it is easier for them to find the organs/nerves etc. then it is on a bigger person. It also states that more experienced students i.e emt's, work/practice on obese cadavers. Also it mentions that another reason obese bodies are sometimes turned down is because some of the schools do not have the means to store the bodies, whether it be they don't have room or their equipment can't handle the weight. Which makes sense seeing as how it was mentioned that embalming adds 100-200 more pounds. So being that some places store the bodies on top of one other & sometimes the students themselves have to move them, I would imagine that a person that was probably 300 lbs while alive then is about 400-500 after being embalmed would be difficult to move/store.
You also have to take in consideration that time is a factor when studying an overweight subject. Once the body is opened in the front, examined, and then sewn up...is it not rolled over on the table for more study? Would this increase the chance of the body reopening when moved over due to the size? As the article stated, the tables cannot handle the size of the subject at hand. Time to upgrade the medical schools equipment? Either way, hands on is key...I mean you don't hire a landscaper because he/she used to play Viva Pinata as a kid do you?
Donate body to science...? I'm not so sure that is a good idea in the first place. If you have the misfortune to get seriously injured, the caregivers may not go the extra mile to save you because they have determined your carcass is more valuable to them than you are. This is especially true if you are an organ donor. Heart: $60k you're net worth....? Do the math.
Whether you are an organ donor or not or choose to donate your body to science, this information must be kept hidden until 8 hours after death. This keeps the circling buzzards at bay until the survivors of the said person can rationally sort matters out on the deceased person's behalf.
8 hours after death most of the donatable organs are wasted. Live tissue and organs are what is necessary to save lives. That's why they keep a person on a ventilator to keep the blood and tissues oxygenated isn't it?
You are all a bunch of retards
You are a troll...and certainly not a physician. You have to be smart to be one of them.
So you just run along and be a good troll before some angry corpse picks you up by the scruff of your neck and pastes your fanny to a medical examiner's office door and leaves you for the malpractice attorneys.
Certainly don't think a true doctor would be calling people who could potentially be patients (past/current/future) "retards."
Airborn7 sounds like a "true" doctor, like about 90% whom I have known. An inveterate arrogant A-hole for all seasons. Airborn7, honey, like it or not, your world is changing. Professionals like doctors and lawyers once controlled the masses cause they kept secrets to themselves, and other people had to pay them for their assistance. Now, with the internet, it's harder for you to keep your secrets and subjugate the masses. Doctors didn't want patients posting bad opinions on them online cause it cut into their income! Ha! Some idiot dentist thought she could fine a patient everyday over that! Where did she get the idea that free speech laws don't apply to disgruntled patients! That's already been shot down in the courts! So you don't like fat people! Diets fail 97% of the time, and the American masses live longer all the time! Wake up and smell the sour grapes!
Even in death, the overweight are discriminated against. I thought that society had progressed against such bigotry. An overweight corpse can offer insight into the effects of obesity on the human body and can serve as a teaching tool to educate others of the results of an unhealthy lifestyle.
This reminds me of the after school field trip that we took to see a body that was donated to the hospital, for teaching med students....it was pretty cool. We passed around the guy's brain.
I wonder if these people have tried the body farm. It may not be what they were thinking when this gentleman wanted his body to go to science, but , the study of forensics on decomposing tissue is necessary in solving crimes.
“The embalming process adds considerable weight. Generally, a 250-pound person might weigh 350 to 400 pounds when embalmed,” said Richard Dey, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at West Virginia University in Morgantown.
LOL; a man in this position should not be so ignorant. He could not be more wrong! He did provide us funeral directors a little humor to start our day though.
That is not correct?? Hmm well I guess when I mentioned it in a previous post that kind of ruins that post lol. oh well guess I wouldn't really know since I have never embalmed any"body" lol.
WOW, Adding emblaming fluid adds that much weight to the body? WELL AMERICA, that's another reason to go on a diet. Even if you don't donate your body to science, you might break through the casket bottom. HAHAHA
OK I just had to jump in here. I am overwieght due to chemo treatments. I gained over 100# in a 2 year period. I have endeavored to lose this extra poundage for a long time now and it is very difficult. Please don't judge others unless you are truly prescient and have knowledge that most don't as to the origin of weight gain. I am very sorry that amnyone feels angry with me because their insurance premiums went up due to people who are overweight like me (I'm sure that their health and body images had absolutely nothing to do with that). Mine didn't; I pay an average premium and am very grateful to have insurance. Good luck to all who are trying to lose weight and I pray for compassion and understanding on the part of others.
The ultimate form of self-love is taking care of our bodies, as well as our minds and spiritual selves. Many Americans have somehow lost the affinity for play, exercise, and real nutrition that comes from the ground, a tree, or other plant. We have got to wake up and stop fooling ourselves that the 1,500 calorie Cracker Barrel meal is what's right for us. We can see it in other "developing" countries, where waistlines are growing with Westernized meals and lifestyles.
Okay so I am reading this article and taking in all the information and then I read this "So far, medical schools are still able to get enough lean bodies for students to use, experts said. Some programs use corpses from for-profit tissue brokers, which are loosely regulated and supply an unknown number of bodies each year."
I wonder why the author of this story didn't expand on that?
Talk about selective teaching...There should be classes for both. They are going to be treating all kinds of bodies and minds. What they are teaching is to be selective who to treat. Not the real world. Without any training on large people there is no real training. What are these teachers??? Must be Republicans. lol
newbob - It's not selective teaching. Gross anatomy class has a goal - to teach normal anatomy (and function that goes with it). It is often the first class in medical school. One must learn normal (which, in this case does not mean common), before one can learn other things (abnormal anatomy, pathology, etc.).
We learn about obesity (and other things) and have exposure to obese individuals (both as standardized patients and real patients) AFTER we've learned to recognize normal.
Of course, my comment is not reflective of Maggie-129's situation or those whose circumstances are similar. The overwhelming majority of overweight and obese people do not have such situations. Blessings to you. I have been obese and never plan to return there.
Try the Body Farm at the Univ of Tennessee.They use donated bodies for other types of research and may very well take obese ones for their experiments on decomposition etc.