2023-04-24 05:00:05
Brazilian legislation allows the donation of bodies to science, but making this process effective is still difficult. There are fewer cadavers available for students to study in anatomy courses, and learning with real bodies is becoming a privilege in Brazil.
According to specialists in the conservation of cadavers for teaching, the biggest obstacles to donation are the lack of information on the subject for potential volunteers and the paperwork needed to carry out the act. In addition, it is also common for universities to lack structure to receive bodies.
Body donation is a relatively recent possibility in Brazil. “We had a steady stream of unclaimed bodies, formerly known as indigents. So much so that the laws we have nationally regulate the teaching of anatomy are designed for the use of these bodies”, says Professor Andrea Oxley, from the Federal University of Health Sciences in Porto Alegre.
“The issue is that in recent years, with the amount of information circulating, it is very difficult not to find relatives of someone who dies. With that, we had to look for other alternatives to supply the demand and voluntary donation became an alternative for us”, says Andrea, who is a member of the Brazilian Society of Anatomy.
In addition to the smaller number of unclaimed bodies, Brazilian science began to run into other problems. “There are many institutions in the interior of Brazil that do not register volunteers for donation and suffer from a lack of available cadavers. Worse, there are health faculties that don’t even have places to store cadavers”, says anatomy professor Flora Aparecida Milton, from the Faculty of Medicine at UnB.
How does body donation work?
In Brazil, there is no single registry that allows interested parties to express their interest in donating their bodies to science after death. Currently, according to the Brazilian Society of Anatomy, there are 39 different programs managed by universities for registering volunteers. “This is a small fraction, it doesn’t even reach 5% of the universities that have health courses in the country”, says Andrea.
The donation process needs to be done quickly, as the corpse begins to lose its properties as the first days of death pass.
Anatomy classes usually take place with cadavers preserved in formaldehyde or plastic modelsDisclosure/UFSCPA
Study on fresh and frozen cadavers produced by the ITC of Brasília – MetrópolesFrozen cadaver study is expensive and unaffordable for most studentsDisclosure/ITC Brasilia
Study on fresh and frozen cadavers produced by the ITC in BrasiliaTo import a fresh corpse, institutions pay R$ 150,000 for each bodyDisclosure/ITC Brasilia
Anatomy class at UFSCPAAnatomy class at UFSCPA takes place with bodies that were donatedDisclosure/UFSCPA
Skull from the UnB Anatomy MuseumUnB also regularly receives bodies that have been delivered for donation.Disclosure/Unb
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Find out how to donate:
1. Find an institution
To register as a donor, you need to find an educational institution that receives donated bodies. In Brasilia, for example, there is a single donation register managed by the Public Ministry, the pro-life. The Brazilian Society of Anatomy maintains a register of programs divided by state that can be consulted on your website.
2. Formalize your intention
After finding and contacting the nearest donation program, it is necessary to print and fill out a donation intention form, as shown in the model created by State Council for the Distribution of Corpses of Paraná, for example. This term must be signed together with two witnesses who, preferably, are first-degree relatives. The body donor’s signature must be notarized.
3. Talk to relatives
Consensus with family members is essential, as they are ultimately responsible for the donation. If it is not in the interest of those responsible for the body, the donation is not made, even if the registration has been done correctly. The family is also responsible for notifying the university of the donor’s death so that the body can be transported and preserved as quickly as possible.
impediments and regrets
There are no impediments to donating people who died naturally, even if they have infectious diseases, as the conservation process inactivates pathogenic agents. People who died unnatural deaths, however, cannot have their bodies donated due to possible police investigations.
In addition, both the donor and his family can express regret at any time prior to the donation. However, once the body is effectively forwarded to the university, it is no longer possible to retrieve it. Visits are also not allowed and relatives do not receive the ashes if the body is incinerated after the possibilities of studying it or keeping it preserved have ended.
The family can also donate the body of someone who has not formally expressed an interest in donating it in life. However, it is necessary to contact the institution that will receive the body in advance to carry out the process.
Teaching with real bodies
For Reinaldo Tovo, coordinator of the Dermatology residency at the Hospital do Sírio Libanês, in São Paulo, the difference in learning between students who had access to real bodies in their training is “remarkable”. “I would rate students who had to learn anatomy using anatomical models a 0.5 out of 10”, says the expert.
According to Tovo, even teaching with cadavers preserved in formaldehyde no longer represents the best form of education, since modern freezing techniques better preserve bodies. Still, the knowledge of students who had contact with real corpses, for the doctor, is at least ten times better than those who did not.
For Flora, students who have never worked with cadavers lose the possibility of learning basic principles of medicine in their first years of teaching. “With the real body, students have the opportunity to dissect, see the layers of tissue, fat, in addition to perceiving the variety of human life beyond anatomical models”, says the professor.
Andrea points out that contact with corpses also contributes to the ethical training of professionals. “Having contact with bodies, we learn to respect human vulnerability, to have contact with the fragility of our existence, which is key for a good health professional”, she says.
Importation of cadavers
The search for a professional qualification using real cadavers ended up creating a curious market in Brazil. As in the United States and Europe there are many educational institutions that keep corpses frozen, some of them have started to export these “pieces” to countries like Brazil, which do not have this technology.
“At UnB, I have freezers where I can keep fetuses, for obstetric studies, but keeping an adult body preserved at low temperatures is expensive and demands a structure that we don’t have”, points out Professor Flora. To keep corpses preserved in this way, it is necessary to constantly keep the body at a temperature of -15°C.
As a result, private companies began to offer courses within the country or even abroad for Brazilian physicians, but all of this at a high cost. “The costs are related to the transportation of the body. We don’t pay for corpses, it’s forbidden”, says Jorge Aires, orthopedic doctor at the Cadaver Training Institute in Brasilia.
“Costs vary greatly depending on the number of pieces ordered, size, even dollar rates and the weight of the frozen patient. We work, however, with an average of 120 to 150 thousand reais for a body”, says Jorge.
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