Body Farms??!!

      I learned for the first time from one of the members of the Unbound trip about  "Body Farms" in the United States. He told me that people who may not have the  money for a funeral offer to donate their body after death for forensic research.

They allow their dead bodies to be used to help solve crimes.

The largest one in the United States is in Texas.Here is a website:http://www.sliptalk.com/body-farm/
 Here is description  from their website:

"The Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF) serves as a resource for forensic anthropology students, researchers, as well as state and national law enforcement agencies. Research into questions relating to time since death, the postmortem interval and decomposition processes for human remains under various topographical and climate conditions are conducted at FARF.

The FARF is a 26-acre outdoor human decomposition research laboratory at Texas State’s Freeman Ranch. The Texas State facility is spatially the largest facility of its kind in the world. The FARF is used by the forensic science community to gain knowledge about human decomposition and developing methods for determining the post mortem interval or time since death. The FARF is also used to train forensic anthropology students, law enforcement, and medicolegal personnel in methods for searching and recovering human remains in a medicolegal context.

FARF was conceived because there is a need to develop rates, patterns, and sequences of human decay applicable to Texas and western states. The FARF formally opened in 2008. Since then, research has been conducted on approximately 150 donor individuals, with another 200 living people pre-registered as donors to this unique forensic program. Once the donor bodies are removed from FARF and processed at ORPL, they are kept in perpetuity and accessioned into the permanent Texas State Donated Skeletal Collection. This collection of documented modern skeletal remains will form the basis of future research and be utilized for scientific research and education for years to come."
   There are six such facilities in the United States. If you want to read more, check out:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm.
     I learned there is a novel by Patricia Conwell with the name The Body Farm. Here is the plot:
Kay Scarpetta is called in to assist in the investigation of the brutal murder of 11-year-old Emily Steiner in rural North Carolina, whose murder resembles the handiwork of a serial killer who has eluded the FBI for years. Scarpetta is joined by her ingenious, rebellious and very annoying niece, Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico's computer engineering facility. To help with the investigation, Scarpetta turns to a clandestine research facility in Tennessee known as the Body Farm. There she finds answers to Emily Steiner's murder.

Sounds like an interesting read!

 
 
 
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