Kin, medical students honor body donors

The event prompted medical students to skip classes to pay their respects to people they knew intimately — but never alive.

A group of more than 100 gathered for a memorial service at the Salt Lake City Cemetery on Friday to honor the 103 individuals whose bodies were donated last year for research and teaching in the University of Utah School of Medicine.

"Some of us live and learn, and others die and teach," Kerry Peterson, director of the U.'s Body Donor Program, said to the group composed mostly of students and family members of donors. "Collectively, these research projects have saved lives, improved the quality of our lives and led to longer lives for those who seek treatments."

Peterson conducted the memorial service, which the Body Donor Program has been holding yearly since 1998.

"We need to honor the donor and thank the family for following through with this donation," Peterson said before the memorial service began.

The group had a chance to speak in an open session at the end of the service.

Ray Jones said he decided to donate his body to science when he dies while he was a medical student in the 1960s, studying a body he called "Sir Frank."

The connection between cadaver and student led former and current students to attend the service.

Students become very familiar with these cadavers as they study the same body throughout their entire gross anatomy course, said David Morton, course director for gross anatomy. More than half of his class attended the memorial, some skipping other classes to be there.

"There is an intellectual relationship because of learning ... and there is an emotional relationship because of the donor's gift," he said. "You cannot learn any other way about how the human body is put together."

He said the memorial service is touching for students who have completed the gross anatomy course. "It is a wonderful way to wrap up and almost resolve their experience in the anatomy lab and their very first year of medical school."

Scott Winder, a first-year medical student, stood and told the audience he appreciates the spirit of giving more because of the donors' sacrifice.

"It's as personal as it can be," Winder said after the program about his experience with the cadaver he studied. He said he was amazed at the thought while working with the body that it was once a living person who made a "true human sacrifice," a sacrifice that made late nights or early mornings devoted to studying no sacrifice for the student.