NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH: Lots of shots of decomposing bodies, skeletons and such. Plus frank discussion of postmortem facts.

Please stay on topic–in this case, forensics, death, the American way of dealing with funerals, bodies, etc. As usual, no ad hominem attacks, and try to keep the language as clean as you can. Thanks!

Welcome Ben Fasman and Alix Lambert, Producers of The Body Farm.

Meet Dr. William Bass, a warm, grandfatherly guy who is the caretaker of the field laboratory of the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility. There donated bodies are left to decay as students study their states of decomposition, adding to the annals of forensic science.

As Dr. Bass explains, the popularity of shows such as CSI has given jurors a false understanding of the mechanics of forensic science. But the Masters and PhD students at Body Farm, located just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee keep developing new technology that outpaces television, like studying the decay of bodies under cement to a decomposition sniffing machine.

Death at the Body Farm is dealt with in a matter of fact way, and the bodies are seen as valuable tools. It is important for the criminal justice system that such place exists, and important for us to realize there is just as much dignity for these corpses as at any funeral service. And more use for them, really. It’s actually a really green way to deal with remains. No watering of cemetery lawns, no expensive upkeep, no smoke, no ashes.

And yes, you can donate your body to the UT Anthropological Research Facility—only odds are your bones will not end up as some skeleton hanging in a class room. Most likely your earthy remains will be fed to maggots, possibly wrapped in a tarp or buried under cement, providing weeks, if not years, of valuable instruction for scientists, and hopefully helping to either save an innocent or condemn the guilty by providing a tool to discover key evidence.

(VBS.TV – The Body Farm)