Throughout my day I come across a lot of things I would like to post about, but not all of them are in keeping with or even CLOSE to in keeping with health and wellness. I know I stretch sometimes, but I always write about something I have learned or something that interests me.
I just happened upon that tonight. This might not be suitable for everyone and it certainly won’t interest everyone.
I have long wanted to donate my body to science. When I am done with it I have always hoped it could help people. I watched a special tonight that really amazed and interested me and really helped confirmed that donation is a great thing. I was of the belief that it would go as a whole to a medical school, but now-a-days with so much surgery being done laparoscopically the need to practice on real tissue has greatly increased. So an entire body is not always needed.
I understand that this might be against some people’s religion or beliefs which is understandable. But if not, it might be something to consider. Even though I cannot dwell on the actual details, I love to focus on what a donation can mean: saving a life or improving the quality of one. To me that is a tremendous gift.
There is a company here in the United States* that will take a body at no cost to the family. For a lot of people not having the cost of a funeral or anything could be a very big relief. Plus the body can be used for great things.
Body parts can be used in medical studies, in transplantations, in medical products. We could keep on giving.
All of the information on this show** was amazingly fascinating to me, but I have a feeling that not many here would care for the details. I will say that due to all of the medical advances there is an increase in demand by as much as 50% per year. With this huge increase in demand for tissue the black market is getting larger. Since only 1% of Americans donate, it is still very profitable for thieves to steal and sell. It is awful to think that some people are profiting from stealing someone’s body. And on top of that, if they are doing it so dishonestly they COULD be doing it with potentially diseased tissue. This TV program hinted that if more people were to donate through legitimate sources it might help make it less profitable for the shady ones and there for less worth the risk.
Did you know:
—Bone graphs from one person could go on to help 80 people. (That is EIGHTY people that could live a better life because ONE person decided to be generous with something they are no longer using.)
—In Britain it was illegal to practice medicine on a cadaver until 2006.
—Organs need to be retrieved while the heart is still beating, but tissue can be retrieve up to 24 hours after death.
—They can use an achilles tendon to replace a ruptured knee ligament.
—Tissue transplant includes bones, tendons, and skin.
—Donated human tissue can be used in Medical Science, Education, bio products.
*Anatomy Gifts Registry (AGR) – Tissue Broker
**The show I watched was first aired in 2008, I just watched it July, 6, 2010. All the information in this post is from the show.
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