blustocking | this tomato tastes corpsey!

I'm all for donating your body to science, but not if they're going to do this:

"That's because, in the United States, there's no quick, clean, commercial way to extract a skeleton from a corpse. To become a skeleton, a body has to rot the old-fashioned way. And the only place in the country that will macerate or decompose a body is the University of Tennessee.

The "Body Farm"
Coined the "Body Farm" by crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, UT's Anthropological Research Facility is a 3-acre fenced-off lot behind the UT Medical Center where retired professor William Bass has studied the decomposition of human bodies for more than two decades. With the support of the university, Bass established the facility to help the state medical examiner's office, which he served as state forensic anthropologist. At the time, the state had no better way of storing forensic evidence or studying crime scene elements like time of death. "Suppose you were a law enforcement agency and you went out and discovered a maggot-covered body. You can't take it down to the police department because it smells too bad. Well, morticians don't like smelly bodies either.

"Morgues now have good cooling rooms, but in 1971, they didn't," Bass said.
Today, at any given moment, a dozen or so bodies are scattered across the lot, decaying in controlled experiments. Some are buried partially, others left in the open. On occasion, Bass and his researchers will place a body in a car trunk or in water to simulate actual crime scenes.
Most of Bass' bodies are people who have donated themselves to science or are unclaimed corpses involved in crime investigations."

Now every time I see that book at the bookstore, I'm going to think of this. X_X

My pictures are looking more spookified now