I've been reading upsetting stuff for a while now on the increasing crisis in medical science that is coming about from the decreasing scarcity of human bodies made available for scientific research. Well, according to the Beeb, there is a desperate shortage of folks who donate their brains to science when they die. Evidently a donor card doesn't do the trick in most cases. That's just for transplants. So for all of you who haven't got some other serious objection, please do make sure that your friends and relative know that you want your body made available, especially since many doctors are evidently such fragile flowers that they now don't even ask.
Oh, and just for the record,
WHEN I DIE, PLEASE MAKE MY BODY AVAILABLE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
signed me, Rustin H. Wright - geek of all work.
Have I made myself clear?
If nothing else, the idea of researchers trying to make sense of my body and brain, which have already left quite a few doctors shaking their heads and leaving me to figure it out for myself, tickles me no end.
p.s. - I've never liked the whole drop the body into a sealed box thing. As my essays on sending bodies to the Moon and Mars should make plain, I'm far happier with the idea of all those complex, useful chemicals going back into the ecosystem. As far as I'm concerned, it's even more, dare I say, spiritually satisfying. Part of me (which parts, you ask) has always felt that if I were to die with some scratch in the bank and some friends willing to take on the job, that the ideal would be to have my unembalmed body put in a wicker coffin and buried in an unmarked hole in an unrecorded location deep in the Cascades or the Rockies.
"Where is Rustin buried?"
"The mountains back around there."
"Where exactly?"
"Just back there. We didn't keep a record of where."
Sadly, this would not only be complex, it would also be illegal.
Our society has some serious problems.
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