LONDON (Reuters) - A British television channel is seeking a terminally ill volunteer to donate their body after death so it can be filmed as it decomposes.



Channel 4, which in 2002 broadcast Britain's first public autopsy for 170 years, said the program was being made in association with London's Science Museum and would be a unique experiment.


"We hope the experts can learn more about the processes involved and that the data collected by the project can help forensic pathologists in murder investigations," said Simon Andreae, head of science and education at the publicly funded Channel 4.


Richard Shepherd, president of the British Association in Forensic Medicine, will lead a team of scientists supervising the project.


The body will be held in a secret location while being filmed for the program, provisionally titled "Dust to Dust."


It will be the first experiment of its kind in Britain, where scientists currently use pig bodies to study rates and means of decomposition. Their research is used by police investigators to help determine the time of death when a body is found
source

That's interesting, you sure wouldn't want to eat anything after watching it that's for sure.

oh man id watch it!

It would like a real live CSI.

ummm okay, that is really wierd

I knew I would get 15 minutes of fame. I didn't expect them to film it though.

that is wrong. what kind of sick (you would get sick after watching it) twisted weirdo (apart from you Dancing_Dumplings) would watch it? it is a real person, decaying on you t.v. screen. it is wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who would do something like that? i am amazed at the lengths people will go to for reality t.v. programs. they won't end until they can get people to kill each other for money. the t.v. stations have gone to far. They should not be allowed to do this to another human being. It is immoral. who would want to let people watch your corpse decaying on t.v. for fun?!!!! i do not agree with it.

Not many people would watch it I suppose.. considering you'd be staring at what would SEEM to be the same image for possibly days..

I don't think I could. Thats rancid, putred, disgusing, sick, twisted....


I'm sure they would speed up the time elapsed. Maybe they would show it a 5x regular speed (for example)?

Its not a reality show. They are taking a person in critacal condision who is donating there body for a science show that people could learn how the body decomposes. I for one would watch it. And they would probably use speed us to make it go faster.

I don't think it's to bad. They do alot worse to donated bodies at some places. Like my school some how got it's hands on a 12 year old girls skeleton (which I discoverd on my bio desk ) and some A## hole was doing things of sexual nature with the body. I would have stopped him when he started to move the jaw up and down and using it as a puppet but I was to shocked and sickened at this guy.

I can understand them filming it for studying by the police and medical fields, but anything else is just sick.

i personally think its a fantastic idea.. its good knowledge for crimonologists to determine the onset of decomposistion.. and what factors are involved.. in the long run. it will help with many cases so that solving crimes becomes less of a tedious task... dont forget, there are body farms such as this with the bodies being in different states of decomposed bodies..and in different situations (water, direct sunlight, partially buried etc)
these ppl readily donate their bodies to science for ppl to learn.. its been going on for a good many years now, and i for one will be watching the show... it'll be very interesting

From a scientific point of view its a great idea but from my point of view its just a bit too disgusting and freaky for me to watch!

hmm this'll freak you out then..... my last operation i had i wanted my doc to record it so i could see the 'goings on'... he said "no" (bugger) to which i can understand.. legally if something goes wrong (which it did.. yay for peirced lungs) they have evidence...

but when i was vet-nursing.. i used to get right into the action.. great stuff. watch the ops while chowing down.. doesnt bother me one bit

Tigger ... I saw that documentary you mention called "The Body Farm" did you get to see it ??? it was pretty gross but very interesting. It just seemed weird to see human corpses lying around the premises though & the time lapse video was quite vomitable

I think the idea of helping coppers solve crimes with this kinda thing is good , but airing it on tv ? I'm not convinced its a good idea.

How many in depth crime shows have wopwed us with the cleverways criminals are caught, cool huh! Or not. By showing the genral public how the crimes are solved it inadvertantly helps those who commit crimes to either get away with it or delay their capture.

/rant over

Saves me staring at my bowl of rotten fruit, now I will have something even more interesting to stare at!

agree with lego jedi.

criminals love those shows

I saw it too. It's interesting.
On NGC " The Body Farm ".

All I can say is.......YUCK!!!!!
That shouldn't be aired on TV! Do you think when the person donated their body for science, that they really thought it would be televised on TV for everyone to watch it decompose?! I can see it being filmed privately for the police, medical, science, etc., but not to be on TV for anyone and everyone to watch!! This is a "SICK" world!!!!!!!

True, it is sick to watch, but its life. I'm not sure I would call this a sick world because of this video.

Oh man, thats awesome.

great TV.

I say bring it on.

I could most likely watch it for scientific value and I would not condem anyone for watching or not watching. Beides, it couldn't be worse that some of that stuff they show on the learning channel in the states. Some programs are pretty gorry.

yea i did.. it was fascinating... they used to try the same 'experiments' on pig carcases.. but found it was less conclusive




earthygirl... ppl donate their bodies to science for reasons of their own.... they wouldnt donate it with certain clauses, what would be the point, you would never learn from them?? that would be just the same as saying i dont want my donated organs going to 'such and such' individuals... the bodies are usually donated for an extent of 6 years (obviously these ones wont last that long under these processes), then after that they are buried or cremated
it's only sick if its been put in your head that way.. we all have choices, and your choice would be not to view such a programme if you feel so strongly against it

on a lighter note... leonardo da vinci was waaay ahead of his time on many levels.. he used to obtain dead bodies and dissect them... he mapped out how muscles attached to bones, how ligaments worked etc... he even learnt how the blood flowed through the human body and the aspects of the skeletal system... without ppl donating bodies (although i'm not too sure that these bodies would have been donated) we would know too much at all

i'd definitely watch it.......that would be so interesting

If you dont like it, dont watch it.

It's not as simple as that. Of course if someone doesn't like it they won't watch it. (Or...will they? ) The problem is that there are some limits to all things, and every time you surpass a limit, you automatically set another limit.

Someone said before in this topic


This is...how should I call it...lust for the macabre? What next? "Tonight on 20:00 on _____(insert network name) an exclusive spectacle: the execution of convict #xxx" or even "Live on ______, the accidental decapitation of a worker at the construction site". Do you think is too far-fetched? Think of the situation 20 (or even 10) years ago regarding the so called "reality shows" (I have yet to comprehend what kind of a reality is this).
What is the idea/suggestion/crazy thought of today, is the standard of tomorrow.

Personally, the whole thing reminds me of a that Kevin Kline film, where he's a TV tycoon without any morals, and says about buying the TV rights from China regarding executions. He says at some point "10 executions per week, guaranteed!"

This isn't TV anymore..This is just a simulation box, where ppl who have no life attempt to take a glimpse of what falsely believe to be reality...

oh well ppl die, body decomposes, it happens. I don't have any more dramatic feelings attatched to it. I wouldn't watch it from tv though, mainly cause I find more interest in living things, and over all it just sounds boring. But sure, why not broadcast it, what's the harm. The body is dead and donated.

Well said.

Down with censorship

So is Channel 4 in England like Fox is in the states? LoL! That's wierd but I could see it's educational factor but... it's just damn wierd!

I watched the autopsy because of my interest in biology and the fact my brother had worked as a deputy coroner at one point. (educational)

However, I don't think watching a corpse decompose would give me much education. We just recently buried my mother-in-law, and it would be too distressing.

I could see the educational value of the autopsy; especially for students of biology and potential students of the future.

My brother was 14 when he saw his first autopsy; and that is what made him decide to take up a career in medicine.

To watch a corpse rot would have probably had the oppisite effect.

Mind you, there could be some people who would get some education from it-but it certainly isn't what I would be watching.

This does not suprise me that much. C4 have a habit of making programmes a little bizarre and out of the ordinary. Great idea for them.. Humans have a fascination with death anyway, even the people who are really against this programme I am sure will be tempted to take just a little peek. Ratings will be high.
I doubt it will be that awful, it is going to be an ordinary corpse nothing that has been mutilated in anyway and we will not have to smell it. I am not really bothered either way by this programme..it was going to happen sooner or later anyhow.

My thoughts exactly!
As long as the show is realised in a serious,scientific way I have no problem with it,we all rot in our graves when we die so why not.
And as long as the dead guy gave permission for it and is treated with respect.
Theres gonna be sickos getting off on it but we cant censor everything because of a few weirdos.

just stick a camera in my lounge after a heavy weekend. always someone looks like they are rotting on a sunday morning!

What, Joan Rivers has a new show

so mean but so funny!

I would love to watch this program. I'm always interested in strange things like this....plus, I could really use it for my writing.....but that's another topic.

I don't understand how this is anything new. Doesn't the CIA run a place callled "The Body Farm" in Virginia where people that donate their corpses are placed under different conditions in which forensics classes can study them and determine how long the body has been decomposing under different conditions and such?

Never mind, I didn't see that it was already mentioned on page 2,

Its all very interesting, I think that if it aired in Australia, I would watch it simply out of morbid curiousity..

Art.. do you per chance use a program called Paltalk?

I don't really watch TV anyway, and I am sure I have enough to do in my life without wasting time watching a corpse rot.

Well I understand how it's for educational reasons, but I can't help but feel that it's just a way to boost ratings. They can't get sitcoms right and the reality TV is just crap so why not pray on most peoples desire to see something sick and also gain some publicity from the people who get angry at this type of thing being shown on TV.


I don't quite think it's ment to be a reality TV show. At least not like Big Brother.




Was this a joke? I suppose you one of people that when you want ot watch something at the end of the tape just sits there though hours of programs you've recorded months before.


So your doctor wouldn't let you be recorded because if something went wrong you would have evidence for or against them which could acutally incriminate them?


Are you suggesting we could teack potential criminals by finding out what people watch on TV and if they watch it then they'll go on the governments list of potential criminals? Interesting...


I kind of agree but what if you just turn on your TV and this just appears before your eyes. I do hate how people like to censor some stuff but morbid stuff like this could probablly be very damaging for some people. I don't really think it should be pulled off the air but I do understand how some people feel about this, though sometimes watching TV is a bit like watching something slowly decompose. I think there should be some kind of guard against shoes like this.


Maybe Tvs slower than we thought.

Well, if the live airing is being advertised in advance, I'd have to seriously question the accidental nature of the beheading!

I was at the public gym here several years ago and happened to see a truly disquieting program on some educational channel. You see, they have TVs in the exercise room to distract you from the fact that your heart just exploded, your legs are about to fall off and your lungs don't like you any more. Usually they just show the normal distressing television programs, like game shows, soap operas, informercials and the sex life of insects. One day, though, they had a program on about an experiment some scientists did. A death-row inmate had donated his body to science. After he was executed they froze him solid and cut him up into cross sections with a chainsaw to learn about the human body. And they SHOWED it! On TELEVISION!!

To ME!!!!

I about fell off my treadmill!

Hey! I just realized! Now I can claim I don't exercise because I was traumatized!

Loretta

What time was it? Did they actually show him being cut up? That's pretty disturbing.

This isn't as bad as that one German fellow who makes art exhibits out of preserved corpses...

Bleh

It was the middle of the afternoon. They showed the whole process, from cutting him up to displaying the slices. I tried not to look but for some morbid reason my eyes kept being drawn to it. Anyway, the sound was up so I could hear the whole show.

Ick!

Loretta