Time for a 2-way street

WE SAY Indiana should share its cadaver wealth with other states to aid science.

Movie tickets, fancy restaurants and retail therapy aren’t the only luxuries that slip out the window in hard economic times. More and more people have been donating their bodies to science in the last few years. After all, funerals are expensive. 

Donated cadavers are a vital resource used by medical schools for training and research. But the IU School of Medicine can only handle so many bodies, and during the last few years it has received donations of up to 70 cadavers above its quota.

An amendment has been added to Senate Bill 218 allowing Indiana to ship excess bodies out of the state to other schools that need them.

While Indiana has recently been flush with donations, other states such as New York have been suffering a shortage. Without adequate numbers, training is difficult and research is stunted.

Given that Indiana can accept bodies from other states, it seems like an obvious decision to allow us to help ease their shortages as well.  

The donation period for a cadaver lasts one year, after which it is returned to the family with cremation or burial fees paid. So long as families are made aware of what donation entails and are returned the body after the period of one year, it doesn’t really matter where the body goes.

Medical students around the country have the same training needs, so sending bodies out of state doesn’t change the donation process in any other way.

Because Indiana can accept bodies if we have a shortage, it seems only fair that we donate them elsewhere when we have a surplus.