Donate your body to science, and the Army uses it to test landmines

But now the story gets stranger still. Tulane University in New Orleans was receiving more bodies than it could use. So it hired a New York company to distribute the so-called "surplus body parts" for profit. This New York company, National Anatomical Service, turned around and sold bodies to the Pentagon to be used for -- get this -- landmine testing!

That's right: people who thought they were donating their bodies for science were actually having their bodies used to test military explosives. That's not what most people have in mind when they think they're donating their bodies to science.

I've warned people against being organ donors for years. When you donate organs or your entire body to some organization out of good will, there's absolutely no guarantee that the organization -- even a university -- isn't going to sell your dead body to someone who will use it for some outrageous or obscene purpose. The surfacing of this story proves that. Keep your organs. Even when you're dead. And don't let some huckster sell your body parts for his own personal profit.

• Bodies donated to a university medical school were sold to the army who then blew them up in tests involving land mines, escalating the controversy over the unregulated use of human body parts.
• Chuck Dasey, a spokesman for the Army Medical Research and Material Command in Fort Detrick, Maryland, said the bodies were blown up in tests on protective footwear against land mines.
• The Pentagon has long bought cadavers to use in research involving explosive devices and has been one of the biggest buyers in the largely unregulated trade.
• But few people who agree to donate their bodies or those of their deceased relatives realise they will end up being used in such tests.