How To Beat Funeral Costs

By Maury Hirschkorn
News Editor

These days, with embalming, a casket, transferring the body, a hearse, cosmetology, viewing costs and other items, a funeral can cost between $6,000 to $7,000. A cemetery plot and headstone can cost a few thousand dollars more.

But there is a way to beat those costs: a person can donate his or her body to the Stony Brook University Anatomy Department. The person just has to fill out and sign a donation form in front of two witnesses and mail it to the Department of Anatomical Sciences. When that person dies, someone contacts the anatomy department or the Stony Brook funeral director, and they pick up the cadaver. Around two years later, the body’s ashes are returned to the family. The cost is free.

Other SUNY colleges across the state have the same arrangement. That’s not always so with other colleges. “Some private schools charge the family for transportation,” said Linda Benson, a receptionist for the Stony Brook Department of Anatomical Science.

What happens to the cadaver after the Department of Anatomical Science gets it? Mostly, they are used by Stony Brook students in advanced anatomy classes in the medical department. They dissect and examine the cadaver and see how organs look like and how muscles move. Looking at human anatomy in textbooks is limiting.

The Stony Brook Department of Anatomical Science also sells two cadavers a year to Suffolk Community College in Selden. They are used in a class there called Special Topics in Anatomy and Physiology. This is a required class in the physical therapist assistant program.

Robert J. Stone, biology professor at Suffolk Community College, praised using cadavers in this class. “Looking at models and drawings of muscles [is] good,” he said. “But there is nothing better than seeing the actual muscle, inside and outside. Students work on the cadavers and see how they move. This is helpful when they work on live bodies in the future.”

Cadavers are also used in the Suffolk Community College class, Anatomy and Physiology II. “In this course, the bodies are not cut into,” Stone said. “Students are just shown them.”

There are few requirements to a body being accepted by the university. It had to be 18 years of age or older. It doesn’t matter if the body had a disease, amputation or a prior surgery. Reasons for rejecting a body are that it was autopsied, decomposed, had AIDS, or had a previous embalming.

If you’re interested in donating your body or another body to the Stony Brook Anatomy Department, call Lisa Benson at (631) 444-3111.