"It's kind of another stigma," said Wade. "They kind of feel victimized."

I. . . just. . . don't have the vocabulary for this.

"The embalming process adds considerable weight. Generally, a 250-pound person might weigh 350 to 400 pounds when embalmed"

Yeah, I've known a few who could stand to embalmed a bit less.

Wow, just imagine having to dissect that one! I wonder how many kids would never want to be doctors after wading through that much person.

MDGeist: Wow, just imagine having to dissect that one! I wonder how many kids would never want to be doctors after wading through that much person.

And then they start their residency, only to discover that year one was false advertising.

MDGeist: Wow, just imagine having to dissect that one! I wonder how many kids would never want to be doctors after wading through that much person.

OTOH, there are a LOT of fat people out there today. I could see it being to a med student's advantage to learn how to deal with the bariatric crowd in school.

*Sigh* Fine, I'll do it...



/1st GL in almost 2 years
//Liters represent!
///I sound fat

Guuberre: MDGeist: Wow, just imagine having to dissect that one! I wonder how many kids would never want to be doctors after wading through that much person.

OTOH, there are a LOT of fat people out there today. I could see it being to a med student's advantage to learn how to deal with the bariatric crowd in school.

It's not that. It's just that it is a lot of extra work for the students, the TA or Prof who has to do the prep of the bodies for the Anatomy labs. Where I work, we get TA's to prep the body (we only have one) for the next Anatomy lesson. Last year they gave us a real fat SOB and it was a mess up there.

1.For quasi-legal reasons, we can't dispose of body parts (including fat) from our cadaver as we go, the whole thing goes back to the med school when we are finished. It's not a problem when you have Slim Goodbody, the waste bucket doesn't get too full and it sits just out of sight and gets pieces thrown in as you go. For Fatty McCheese, we needed three waste buckets that weighed about 75 lbs each by the time they were done with him. All filled with fat they cut away so they could visualize structures. Which leads to...

2.It's really, really, really hard to visualize the structure of a fat person and demonstrate the anatomy to a class of 25 without getting messy (see above).

3.Sometimes it is only one person prepping and she is not a large girl. She has no problem moving around the smaller cadaver we have this year, but last year she needed two people to maneuver him around.

I understand the need to be able to effectively treat an obese patient, but they are not the ideal for Anatomy labs.

AlanSmithee: Why should Science get all the bodies? I'm donating mine to Spanish Litterature.

I'm donating mine to the football program to be used as a tackling dummy. Unless its Penn State, then they can use me to point out where the bad coach touched them.

And yet, this would be the perfect example of the average patient that they will see. Why not teach the reality?

Sebastian: Guuberre: MDGeist: Wow, just imagine having to dissect that one! I wonder how many kids would never want to be doctors after wading through that much person.

OTOH, there are a LOT of fat people out there today. I could see it being to a med student's advantage to learn how to deal with the bariatric crowd in school.

It's not that. It's just that it is a lot of extra work for the students, the TA or Prof who has to do the prep of the bodies for the Anatomy labs. Where I work, we get TA's to prep the body (we only have one) for the next Anatomy lesson. Last year they gave us a real fat SOB and it was a mess up there.

1.For quasi-legal reasons, we can't dispose of body parts (including fat) from our cadaver as we go, the whole thing goes back to the med school when we are finished. It's not a problem when you have Slim Goodbody, the waste bucket doesn't get too full and it sits just out of sight and gets pieces thrown in as you go. For Fatty McCheese, we needed three waste buckets that weighed about 75 lbs each by the time they were done with him. All filled with fat they cut away so they could visualize structures. Which leads to...

2.It's really, really, really hard to visualize the structure of a fat person and demonstrate the anatomy to a class of 25 without getting messy (see above).

3.Sometimes it is only one person prepping and she is not a large girl. She has no problem moving around the smaller cadaver we have this year, but last year she needed two people to maneuver him around.

I understand the need to be able to effectively treat an obese patient, but they are not the ideal for Anatomy labs.

Why the fark am I on this board while eating potato soup?!

Guess that option is out for me. I'm tall and fat. Heck after I'm done using my body, chop me up with a chainsaw for all I care and throw out the bits.

Dissecting a body correctly is hard, time consuming work. The whole point of it is identifying various structures (many of which are extremely small and/or delicate) and their spatial relationship to surrounding structures, and cutting through a ton of fat makes doing so more difficult and take longer. Plus the body has to be turned over for the spine dissection, which is tough even with multiple people if you're trying not to get completely slimed, not to mention that the legs have to be raised and put in the lithotomy position for the pelvic dissection.

One of the first tips I got in med school was choosing your cadaver. What holds true in life also holds true in death: it's better to be young and thin than fat and old.

Okay, the tray excuse is just stupid. Morgues have to put up with six-foot-four people all the time. I assume they don't do it by cutting the feet off and reattaching them later. If your trays are too small, make larger trays.

I now have two people Favorited "Gets to chop up dead bodies teaching anatomy". This is absolutely not to help me remember who not to piss off.

Coworker: "Hey, doc, I didn't realize you had an extra body scheduled!"

Doc: *puts on sunglasses* "Neither did she."

Helen_Arigby: I now have two people Favorited "Gets to chop up dead bodies teaching anatomy". This is absolutely not to help me remember who not to piss off.

Coworker: "Hey, doc, I didn't realize you had an extra body scheduled!"

Doc: *puts on sunglasses* "Neither did she."

LOL. The man who runs the cadaver lab is a really interesting character. He routinely threatens students by telling them that he knows how to hide a body...

Sebastian: LOL. The man who runs the cadaver lab is a really interesting character. He routinely threatens students by telling them that he knows how to hide a body...

Yeah, I've also figured that a crematorium could probably pull in a tidy under-the-table profit by helping local "gentlemen" dispose of "waste". I read an interesting book a while back called "Dead Men Do Tell Tales": god, is that author in love with his own voice, but once you get past that, it lays out an interesting side of law enforcement that's rarely seen. It included an entire chapter on how crematoria work.

Apparently, it's reasonably typical to have more cremains than will fit in the chosen urn, but some people won't or can't lash out for a bigger one, so graveyards keep a communal grave just for excess ashes--not to mention that you could dress up some people in black and have them scatter the ashes in a park while daubing at their eyes. Most people steer clear of funerals they aren't invited to and don't ask mourners pesky questions...

Dr. Nick Riviera:
One of the first tips I got in med school was choosing your cadaver. What holds true in life also holds true in death: it's better to be young and thin than fat and old.

I dunno about that. Doing necropsies or skeletonizing some older animals can give you a lot of "how the hell did they do that" moments. Also the "oh that had to hurt" discoveries. A young skeleton is usually a boring skeleton.

One thing that is probably universally true is make sure your cadaver is fresh.

Helen_Arigby: Sebastian: LOL. The man who runs the cadaver lab is a really interesting character. He routinely threatens students by telling them that he knows how to hide a body...

Yeah, I've also figured that a crematorium could probably pull in a tidy under-the-table profit by helping local "gentlemen" dispose of "waste". I read an interesting book a while back called "Dead Men Do Tell Tales": god, is that author in love with his own voice, but once you get past that, it lays out an interesting side of law enforcement that's rarely seen. It included an entire chapter on how crematoria work.

Apparently, it's reasonably typical to have more cremains than will fit in the chosen urn, but some people won't or can't lash out for a bigger one, so graveyards keep a communal grave just for excess ashes--not to mention that you could dress up some people in black and have them scatter the ashes in a park while daubing at their eyes. Most people steer clear of funerals they aren't invited to and don't ask mourners pesky questions...

Sons of Anarchy used a similar angle this last season to dispose of a body. The former Sheriff and the guy who does the burning got rid of a body.

I did read Mary Roach's Stiff. It talks about using cadavers for research. Very interesting book, it doesn't just talk about the use of cadavers for Anatomy dissection (first thing you think of when someone donates their body to science) but all the other "uses" science has for the cadaver. For instance, when the Army contracted a lab to test their newly designed combat boot, it was cheaper for the lab to purchase cadaver legs than to use a leg model. The models cost something like $1000/test and the real legs were $700 each. It also spoke about the ethics of letting people know what exactly the bodies were being used for and it has been universally accepted that no one tells.

She had an awesome chapter on the "body farm" that studies rates of human decomposition in various situations. Clothed, unclothed, buried at various depths under various soils. I understand that not everyone would find these topics fascinating, but I did.

For some reason I keep imagining a TA saying "And you thought they smelled bad on the outside!"

You'd think since fat people are now the majority that they would think it would be useful to prepare students for what's coming.

Sebastian: I understand the need to be able to effectively treat an obese patient, but they are not the ideal for Anatomy labs.


Just did a GI dissection today. Not possible with an obese corpse.

This fat f*ck is going to be cremated. Even in death, my carbon footprint will live on.

As a former Human Anatomy TA I'm getting a kick out of these replies. Yeah, obese cadavers suck. I didn't resect the cadavers, but we did have one obese one and I heard about how much of a pain it was to dissect. Apparently the prof put her back out carrying out the biohazard waste (the skin skin and the fat from the cadaver). I hated turning the cadavers over, it was impossible not to get cadaver juice on you.

Ed Finnerty: There's a fortune in candles right there. I'll open a chain of candle shops named "Waddle Towards the Light".

"waddle"? You overestimate.

/is all too familiar with the Hoveround Crowd
//would swear up and down that he's friends with the model used in the famous advertising photo for a Fatass-Crane, except his friend didn't need a crane until after the photo came out

Sebastian: She had an awesome chapter on the "body farm" that studies rates of human decomposition in various situations. Clothed, unclothed, buried at various depths under various soils. I understand that not everyone would find these topics fascinating, but I did.

I saw a documentary about this place. I think it was somewhere in the South. It seemed to me that there should be regional versions of this place to study the effects of local climate and critters.

r1chard3: Sebastian: She had an awesome chapter on the "body farm" that studies rates of human decomposition in various situations. Clothed, unclothed, buried at various depths under various soils. I understand that not everyone would find these topics fascinating, but I did.

I saw a documentary about this place. I think it was somewhere in the South. It seemed to me that there should be regional versions of this place to study the effects of local climate and critters.

Yes, she visited the University of Tennessee or the Texas site, can't remember offhand. Wiki (new window) says there are others, but none operational in the Northern States yet.

lewismarktwo: You'd think since fat people are now the majority that they would think it would be useful to prepare students for what's coming.

No because every cause of the death for fat person will be because they're fat. No need to figure it out.

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