What is body donation?
Anyone who makes the body available to science or scientific education donates the entire body to an academic anatomical institute after death. The Netherlands has 8 Anatomy institutes located in Groningen, Leiden, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Amsterdam and Maastricht. With body donation, your body is used for scientific research, education and healthcare innovation. The aim is to improve medical science. It is therefore different from organ donation, in which organs and/or tissues are taken from the body for transplant purposes.
How do I register?
Anyone who wants to make the body available must, by law, draw up a will. This is a piece of paper on which you indicate that you do not want your remains buried or cremated, but rather make them available to medical science. You can request a living will form from 1 of the 8 Anatomy institutes in the Netherlands. Each department has its own policy for accepting body donors.
Where is there room for me?
Hundreds of bodies are needed for science every year. But body donation is popular. For this reason, there is currently a registration stop at some Anatomy departments. In addition, there may be a stop on registration of people above a certain age or with a certain BMI percentage. It may also be that the institute only accepts applications from people who live in the vicinity of the institute. You can request information about this per institute.
Can loved ones say goodbye to me?
Will your application be accepted? Then talk about this with your loved ones and your GP. When donating a body, it is important that your body reaches the relevant institution within 24 hours after death. The space to say goodbye is therefore limited. This can be drastic for those left behind. Contact will have to be made with the funeral director with whom the institute collaborates. And he will pick up the body after a few hours.
Can every body be used?
A body that is not at the institute within 24 hours cannot be used for scientific research. This also applies to bodies that are involved in a fatal accident or have a certain contagious infectious disease such as HIV, Hepatitis A and B, Creutzfeld-Jacob and TB. There are also institutions that do not accept seriously overweight bodies. The anatomy of the internal organs can no longer be properly studied in such cases.
What happens to my body?
When your body arrives at the institute, it will first be inspected. Here we look at which training the body is suitable for. Most bodies are used for cutting specialists to practice on. The goal is to get as close as possible to a situation that resembles that in a real operating room. The institutes want to respect and comply with the wishes of the deceased as much as possible. In this way, people try to use bodies for multiple operations. Such as hip, heart, neck and abdominal operations. Parts of bodies can also be used as specimens. These are placed in strong water or plastinated and can be used for years.
What happens when the research is finished?
If a body or parts of it can no longer be used, an anonymous cremation follows. Where the ashes are scattered varies per institution. The North Sea is a frequently chosen location. Some institutes have a memorial site. An annual meeting for relatives is held here. The deceased are then commemorated and relatives can talk to doctors and students who have conducted research on the bodies.
Does body donation cost money?
Body donation does not cost money. You do not have to pay the transport costs to the institute or the costs of the cremation of your body(parts). But it is possible that your body will not be accepted, for example in the case of a fatal accident. It may therefore be advisable to take out funeral insurance.
Source: Radboud university medical center, www.lijfsdonatie.info. Photo: MAX
2023-12-15 05:02:38
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