SHE is one of the UK's leading forensic scientists whose study of the human bones has led to the conviction of international war criminals, paedophiles and murderers.
But now Sue Black, director of the University of Dundee Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, has revealed that she plans to leave her own skeleton to help future scientists after her death, helping them learn how to unlock the secrets held within the human frame – and so she can "go on teaching forever".
Speaking on the Radio 4 series We Need to Talk About Death – presented by veteran broadcaster Joan Bakewell – last week. she confirmed that she planned to ensure that her body was useful in every way possible after she died. She said she has made plans for her organs, if she dies young enough for them to be useful, or to donate her whole body – as well as her skeleton – if she lives to a ripe old age.
Admitting her plans were "quite extreme" she said: "First of all I have an organ donor card that will take me probably into my sixties. In my sixties I'll then donate my body for the purposes of dissection and then in my will I have an extra requirement for my skeleton to be retained and that to be used for teaching purposes in my department, so that I go on teaching forever."
Black, who is currently 56 and originally from Inverness, previously worked for the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the United Nations and was involved in harrowing work on the identification of victims – and the perpetrators – of atrocities in various conflicts.
In 1999, she became the lead forensic anthropologist to the British Forensic Team in Kosovo and later worked in both Sierra Leone and Grenada. She has also worked in Iraq and helped to identify Thai Tsunami victims as part of the 2004 international disaster response.
In 2005 Black, who has an OBE for services for her services to forensic anthropology, was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee, and set about fundraising for new state-of-the-art morgue through her Million for Morgue campaign, asking the public to vote for which crime writer, who had consulted her, should be named after. The Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee – its morgue named after Scottish crime writer Val McDermid – opened three years later.
Black said body donation was becoming more commonplace. The Human Tissue Authority receives around 2,000 enquiries a year and advises those who wish to donate their bodies to contact their nearest medical school and fill in a consent form. The regulator also suggests they inform friends and family so they can contact the medical school for collection within five days of death.
Unlike organ donation, body donation is suitable regardless of the age at death, though sometimes bodies cannot be accepted if the medical school has already reached capacity.
Black stressed science benefited "enormously" from the donations. "It has benefits on different levels for different people," she added, claiming the opportunity to practice dissection on real bodies was essential for medical, dentist and science students as well as trainee and even highly skilled surgeons looking to develop new techniques.
She also said it was time for people to move past the dark past of the science of anatomy, where body snatchers were paid by universities to provide corpses, which ultimately led to incentives to murder, as in the infamous case of Edinburgh killers Burke and Hare.
"We are never quite allowed to forget our past, but it has very little to do with our present," she added.
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