Body Donation

Current legislation provides for the use of cadavers for the purposes of scientific studies or research. Law 8.501/92, in its article 2, says: "the corpse not claimed by the public authorities, within a period of thirty days, may be sent to medical schools, for teaching and research purposes of a scientific nature". We consider the inadequacy of legal dictates, in terms of scientific practice, as the corpse must be formalized within 72 hours post-mortem, otherwise the degeneration process will aggravate, making its use impossible. It is to be believed, therefore, that, at the moment, this legislation is not meeting the needs of teaching anatomy. Consequently, the lack of human corpses is still a reality in Universities, which will certainly seriously harm the education of students in the health area.

The anatomy department of a university or college must have an environment full of anatomical parts, enabling them to teach properly, training qualified and competent professionals. It is these professionals who will later serve the population itself. Thus, in order to maintain an anatomy laboratory with numerous students from health courses, a system for capturing human cadavers is required, in the very near future. This capture can take the form of what happens in developed countries such as Germany, the United States and Japan.

In Japan, the Department of Anatomy has a Special Committee at the secretariat that registers individuals who wish to donate their bodies while alive. The control of volunteers indicating their personal data is done in forms, which carefully contain all individual characteristics. On the other hand, the Institution delimits the regions or neighborhoods that can participate in this system, since the department needs 30 to 40 dead bodies annually. In the body donation system, in its post-mortem phase, the death of the registered person is immediately communicated to the department that provides the relevant acts and performs the perfusion of the body for conservation. In Japan, all institutions have an adequate infrastructure for the system and are prepared to bear the expenses inherent to the transportation and subsequent burial service of the mortal remains of the corpses, when the dissection work is concluded. As for the return of bodies to relatives, it is done on a date established in the department's calendar, when relatives or relatives are invited to participate in a joint mass and when the ashes are handed over. Although this process works a lot in other countries, we have doubts that the same happens in Brazil. Our culture, our religious beliefs and many other factors can simply make it unfeasible.