<p>My father found a medical school to donate his body. When he was close to death, I contacted them and when he died, they came to the hospital and took his body. They got the death certificate filed, which is usually the purvue of the funeral home in NY. They will mail me his ashes when they are finished. They were very respectful and easy to work with. </p>
<p>Agree that most med schools are happy to take donations of bodies and will use the body for anatomy class with their students and/or other needs. At our local med school, they are very respectful of the bodies and at the end, have a joint memorial service and ceremony and cremate the remains. They offer the cremains to the family or if the family prefers, they have a ceremony to scatter the cremains for all those the request it out at sea.</p>
<p>If you do a websearch, there are numerous organizations that participate in organ donation programs and you can follow up with whichever ones appeal to you. The easier path seems to be contacting your local hospital and ask them which programs they particpate with and would recommend for organ donations, as I’m sure they will provide helpful opinions as to which they have worked well with. I’d like to donate my body as well, but have to work on H so he will do so if he survives me. I think my kids would be fine with me donating but H wants me to be buried intact.</p>
<p>Thanks Old- and Hi mom. I think (I guess I’m hoping) in PA when you have Organ Donor on your drivers license, you don’t need to make arrangements with any specific institution, and “the system” should take care of it. It would be more convenient if a similar arrangement exists vis-a-vis the whole body. But more important, what I would really like is that if anything can be harvested, that should be the first priority, and then the rest of the body goes to medical use.</p>
<p>Actually I just went to the Albert Einstein link and googled something similar with “Pittsburgh” and landed in the “humanity gifts registry, western PA counties” site. Thanks.</p>
<p>To me, it makes the most sense to try contacting the hospital you will likely be taken to for insights to have the greatest chances of your wishes being carried out. </p>
<p>It is a wonderful thing that you’re willing to be a donor–we need more and every one helps. It likely would work out ok if you have organ donor on your driver’s license AND inform all of your loved ones of your preference and have them willing to honor it. Of course, if your survivors refuse to honor your wishes, they will control. </p>
<p>Checking with your local hospital just increases the odds slightly that everything will go as smoothly as possible, since it’s a fairly short time window from death to when the donated organs/parts/body needs to be received for optimal purposes. </p>