By Anupum Pant
People voluntarily donate their own bodies and the bodies of their family members to science all the time, in a hope of ultimate service, by hoping to be of good use for the advancement of science even after death. However, when releases are signed, people usually are told that the bodies would be given away for medical or educational uses. In reality, the papers don’t say much if the body will carefully get dissected in a medical institution, or will go somewhere else.
It has been reported that automakers often used to, even until very recently (2011), with the help of universities (who have access to bodies) have been making their cars safer by conducting crash test on real human bodies.
These gruesome tests logically make sense because the artificial dummies which have to be made for such impact tests have to rely on data that’s captured using real bodies. So, real bodies are basically used for calibration.
Cadavers are used for several other such kinds of research too…
More about it at [Wired]
If it sounds too unbelievable, there was a story on NBC too…