Cremation alternative "Science Care"?
My wife and I are making plans for our "final exit." One of them is what to do with our remains. There are a bunch of options like cremation, the Neptune Society, tree burial and donation to a medical school. There is another choice about which we have learned recently called Science Care. It seems, upon death, the company will send a team to collect the body and take it to their facility. Once there the body parts are harvested and sold to companies, medical facilities and other organizations which will use them for various purposes. All the remains will be cremated and the ashes returned to the provider(s) of the body. According to the literature there is no cost for this service. We are wondering if anyone has used this company for the described service and how they felt about the entire process. At this point we are unsure whether or not we want to select this option with this company. Many thanks for your thoughts.
Parent Replies
As a trust and estate attorney I keep on top of this issue. The Bay Area Funeral Consumers Association https://www.bafca.org/ discontinued recommending prepaid cremation plans due to risk of insolvency of the organizations. There are some new ones, such as Tulip, which my clients have looked into. Others of my clients have decided upon a full body donation to UCSF medical school, which requires and pre-application and acceptance.https://meded.ucsf.edu/willed-body-program
We haven't seen this option but we're also going through this same process right now. I'm going to check it out. I hope you don't mind that I let out a chuckle when you asked if anyone had used the service. I suspect people who have used it no longer have access to a computer and may not have many opinions on how the process went.
I don’t have experience with this company but I would say that donating your body to a medical/nursing school would be probably the most impactful gift you could make. Having been a student in a cadaver lab I can say that the bodies are treated with the utmost respect, care, and reverence. The bodies are returned to the families when the contract period ends but until then they provide a very valuable service for students of all varieties including medical students, nursing students, and other scientific researchers. It’s such an important part of educating our healthcare providers as well as helping scientific advancement!
I have not used that (or any) company, but John Oliver did an episode of Last Week Tonight in December (2023) about body & organ donation and these companies, and it might be worth a watch if you're considering body donation.
Hello, I’m impressed you are thinking about this! One of my parents decided to donate their body to a medical school upon their death. The medical school they chose to work with is not in the Bay Area, but I would bet UCSF has a similar program. It might be worth looking into, as it’s a more streamlined version of what you described.
I don't have experience with Science Care, but my father donated his body to Stanford's medical school (https://med.stanford.edu/anatomy/donate.html) and the process was very smooth and respectful. He did all the paperwork years ago, and when he died we made a call and they sent someone to pick up the body. They sent a nice letter of appreciation afterwards, and invited my mother to a memorial service on campus for all the families of donors. I think there was an option to have his cremains returned to us if we wanted.