The Body Farm next door
In TV’s, STAR TREK, the series' scientists are seeking “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
In our culture, we rarely "boldly go." Instead, it's the American tradition to (1) ignore anything we don’t know about or, (2) never talk about anything we don’t want to think about.
However, we are often forced to take action in both of these categories. For example, there are times we have voted for a candidate we knew absolutely nothing about -- because we haven’t had time to study what they stand for or simply don’t care about their particular office or who's in it.
Instances where we don’t want to think about something include how we’re going to pay for two kids in college, a child getting married or -- and this last example rings true with almost all of us -- we don’t want to, or like to, think about death.
Some of us are fortunate enough to have deal with a death in the family when we're well into our 40s or 50s. Let’s be honest: anything we know about funeral arrangements, we’ve heard about from a friend who’s been through it.
So, please consider this column, not as an attempt to influence you or your choices, but rather as a conversation about something we may not know much about.
Body Farms, also known as outdoor forensic anthropology research laboratories, are where forensic anthropologists study the decay of human remains. These facilities not only work to improve our understanding of human decomposition, but also to assist law enforcement in their efforts to locate, recover, and identify human remains.
There are seven body farms in the U.S. Two are located in Texas, one next door at Texas State University, called the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS), and another at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville.
Dr. Bill Bass got the idea for the body farm in the 1960s, when he was asked if it was possible to determine the time of death of a partially decomposed cow. The Tennessee facility he built in Knoxville became the largest and only U.S. body farm for 25 years until similar facilities opened at Western Carolina University and Texas State University in the early 2000s.
Today, approximately 20,000 Americans donate their bodies to science every year. Thousands donate bodies for education. Some donate to body farms and some donate their bodies to save the costs of burial or cremation.
Dr. Tim Gocha (pronounced go-shay), Associate Director, FACTS (Forensics Anthropology Center at Texas State) -- said only 15 to 20 percent of donations to their body farm are seeking to bypass end-of-life financial burdens.
As he pointed out, the main difference between donating bodies to a medical school and a body farm is that body farms don’t return any remains to the family. “Our donations are considered permanent. As forensic anthropologists, our end-goal is studying skeletal remains so the skeleton is used over again. At FACTS, all skeletal remains are placed in boxes and cataloged for thousands of further studies." Dr. Gocha said.
“Our database categorizes skeletal remains by male, age at death, stature and weight. We note which bones are complete and teeth. Using this database, we can query anything and can find what we’re looking for. It definitely streamlines teaching students and in assisting visiting researchers and families.
“As recently as yesterday, a family came to see remains of a loved one, cataloged for a number of years,” he said. “Some families don’t ever want to see skeletal remains while others just want to be in the lab where skeletal remains are cataloged… and one woman wanted to read some letters to the box where her husband’s remains were stored.”
Texas State’s FACTS never charges for a donation unless the death occurs outside a 100-mile radius of San Marcus. “In these cases, the family is responsible for arranging transportation, but we are happy to coordinate arrangements for removal and storage (if needed) with the family’s funeral home.
On average, Texas State receives 79 donations annually. Their maximum is 100.
Putting their knowledge to work, Dr. Gocha and two graduate students responded to the horrific wildfires in Northern California in 2018. “There, we helped identify skeletal remains. Our work with non-pulverized cremains also helps us respond to fire fatalities and victim identification,” he explained.
In years past, FACT has worked with other university forensic anthropologists in identifying remains found near the Texas-Mexico border.
Body farms also assist in training cadaver dogs, animals used to find missing persons, particularly long-standing cases in challenging environments. These highly-trained canines also help find victims after massive disasters, particularly in earthquakes and building collapses. Dr. Ben Alexander coordinates this specialized program.
The FACTS body donation program doesn’t advertise. “We have a website and we receive many of our donations from word-of-mouth, often from families who have donated before,” Dr. Gocha said.
Sometimes donations to body farms are a backup plan because medical schools have tighter donation guidelines and body farms have fewer parameters. For example, body farms accept cancer patients while medical schools, in general, do not. Same for bodies with communicable diseases or bodies over 500 pounds.
“When we talk with a donor’s next-of-kin, we often find they don’t have a clear concept of what we do -- that we study the process of decomposition, that some of us study insects, that we sometimes use drones to find clandestine graves… and, we collect skeletal remains. They are then curated and placed in our catalog.”
Dr. Gocha remembers a donor from 2011: “It began as a forensic case. Kids hiking in the woods found a human lower jaw. Their parents called the police. The police called us and we sent our team. The body had been outside years, but we recovered 90% of the skeletal remains. “Working at the scene with the collaboration of the sheriff’s department, we took the skeletal evidence to our lab. There, we performed several analyses. Once the remains were identified, the family decided to donate to FACT’s skeletal collection."
That decision was worth more than a thousand thank-you’s.