Sacrifice and Cadaver Donation

Sacrifice and Cadaver Donation

Though the practice of sacrifice is most commonly associated with devotional practices for specific religions, religious ceremony is not the sole arena for sacrificial rituals. In fact, sacrifice can be used loosely to describe any number of profane activities. Parents make sacrifices for their children; students often sacrifice fun for academic success, and athletes sacrifice social freedom and body comfort for their sport. Yet these examples of profane sacrifice are only related to religious sacrifice distantly, the definition of sacrifice must be stretched quite a bit in order for these secular compromises to be equated with the ritual offerings and practices of religious sacrifice.

However, there is one secular institution that incorporates a practice of sacrifice that is very similar to devotional religious sacrifice. In their book on the nature and function of sacrifice, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss define sacrifice as “religious act which, through consecration of the victim, modifies the condition of the moral person who accomplishes it or that of certain objects with which he is concerned.” [i] Though this definition presupposes that sacrifice is specifically a religious act, the use of cadavers for education can be applied to Hubert and Mauss’s definition and explication of sacrifice. The practice of donation and dissection of human cadavers for education shares characteristics such as the presence of a sacrifier, sacrifice, and sacrificer, all of whom participate in a ritual that allows each participant to experience a modified condition as a result of participating in this ritual. In this way, bodily donation and dissection for education is sacrifice.

Ritual Donation, Preparation, and Dissection

There are essentially two different methods by which an individual can come to be donated as a cadaver for research or for educational dissection. [ii] Either an individual can volunteer their own body for donation, or the family of the deceased can donate a body post hmortem. In either case, there is a strict procedure that is followed in the United States of America, which includes the legal procedure of relinquishing a body, and continues through the embalming, dissecting, and cremating of the cadaver.

The two methods of donation, either by the individual or by their family, are accompanied by the same legal protocol to ensure the cadaver will be used for its intended purpose and its remains will be returned to the family. This protocol goes as follows:

Who Can Donate

Any competent person 18 years of age or over may donate their body for medical education and research.