http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/health/23CADA.html
over the years, i know that i've changed, probably for the more conservative or tradition bound ways, thanks to this wonderful process known as medical school.
but this is one thing that i feel strongly about - there really is no substitution to dissecting an actual human body..." which forces the student ... to confront human mortality."
of course, the argument can be said that human mortality is our (medicine's) business, and if we don't confront it in dissection, we will confront it again and again throughout our career. but there is something to be said about the socialization process that brings physicians in training together in those first few months. and honestly, there is very little that deals with human mortality in that visceral, in-your-face way in the first two years of medical school - those are years esentially spent holed up, *hidden* from humanity. curling up with robbin's pathology is not curling up with issues of life and death, and isn't conducive to deep contemplation about the profundity of donating one's own body to the pursuit of science, medicine and education.
however, i can say that in my anatomy lab, the entire class was so moved by the experience that we collectively had a ceremony to honor the gift that the people who taught as anatomy- dead or alive - had given us (bad sentence structure, i know).
i hope that more people consider donating to science. will i do it? my dillema is between donating for education or for transplantation. but regardless someone's gonna get something that'll help someone. and i hope you consider doing it as well.