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For centuries, students of medicine have dissected the dead. But the idea of wilfully donating one’s body to medicine is somewhat new. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, American anatomists used executed criminals for dissection. When they needed more specimens, anatomists robbed graves, or rather, paid dusky characters to rob graves for them. Those who supplied doctors with bodies were sometimes called resurrectionists or resurrection men.
Nowadays, people in America donate their bodies to science. This has sufficed the medical demand for cadavers until recently. But university programmes are burgeoning, and they are not the only places that want bodies and body parts. Private medical research companies, medical device companies, and surgical training centres all need human tissue. This demand has created a strange new industry in America.

Garland Shreves is the CEO of Research For Life, a whole body donation company in Phoenix, Arizona. In short, he is in the business of acquiring and selling dead bodies. Peter Lang-­Stanton, Galen Koch and Nick Farago take an in-­depth look into Garland Shreves’ business - from donation to dismemberment to delivery.

(Photo: A body lies in the morgue at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, Tucson, Arizona. Credit: John Moore/Getty Images)