To ask for your help disposing of a skeleton?

[Madders45]

I have a skeleton that I acquired when I was studying medicine in the early 80s. Back then it was compulsory to have one.

It’s not a whole skeleton - it’s the skull, spine, pelvic bone + one side of the body. So only one arm and one leg.

It’s now been in my attic for decades, as I’ve never known what to do with it really.

Dh and I have recently retired and are emigrating - I obviously have to dispose of it somehow.

I tried to persuade my daughter to put it in her loft, but she thinks it’s too ‘creepy’.

So I’ve tried googling how to dispose of it - one website said that under the new Health Tissue Act the best thing to do is to offer it to a licensed medical school. I’ve emailed my alma mater and a few other local unis, but they’ve either not replied or declined it.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I think Liverpool John Moore's does anthropology. Might they be interested?

In addition to all the academic departments that have been suggested, you could try Oxbridge college libraries. When I was a first year in 2009, we were loaned skeletons for the academic year by our college library. The library had a mixture of real and plastic skeletons, with not enough real ones to go around. Both types have advantages - with the real ones, you can see muscle attachments much better. So I'd really try to pass it on if you can.

Freecycle - It is amazing what people will take if it's free. I've got rid of loads of stuff. Everything has a use to somebody!

There are sellers of human bones. There is also a museum in hinckley Leicestershire that already has a lot of bones on display who would take it.

What’s the name of the Hinckley bone museum?

By the way, sea burial was a joke. Can you imagine that washing up on the local beach 😵

God I would have just put it in the general waste bin Had no idea there was all these rules. But then I don’t think I’d ever be in the position to need to dispose of human bones.

Well done HTA.

Thank you all so much for your help and especially @HumanTissueAuthority

A medical school in the North West

... (posted too soon) where I live has got back to me and said they’ll take it.

So it’ll go on being used for medical training but won’t be the personal responsibility of a single student (and consequently end up in a loft for years) like it did with me.

All in all, a good outcome (I hope).

that is good, it seems an awful waste for such splendid real skeletons to have to be disposed of.

Think of someone you don't like, wait for them to go on holiday, and then bury the skeleton in their garden. When they get back, anonymously call the police and say you know they've been murdering people and burying them in the garden.

when we had actual skeletons my friend was cutting up a real body.

Isn't cutting up a real body a standard part of medical school?

In Michael Lewis's article about a fund manager who made a fortune predicting the 2008 crash, one of his reasons for leaving medicine for finance is described.

He’d become a doctor not because he enjoyed medicine but because he didn’t find medical school terribly difficult. The actual practice of medicine, on the other hand, either bored or disgusted him. Of his first brush with gross anatomy: “one scene with people carrying legs over their shoulders to the sink to wash out the feces just turned my stomach, and I was done.”

www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004

That's an excellent article by the way. There's an associated book and movie, "The Big Short", in the movie Christian Bale plays Dr Michael Burry.

Put it in a bin bag and put soiled cat litter on top of it and take it to the tip.

There's some really stupid suggestions and people on this thread. Clearly not thought through the consequences of the OP following their advice.

Have asked Dsis, who works in crematorium.
If it has no paperwork, they won't deal with it as identity cannot be confirmed.

Put it in a dinghy and push it out to a sea.

There's some really stupid suggestions and people on this thread. Clearly not thought through the consequences of the OP following their advice

And people not giving half a brain cell’s thought about why you can’t just rock up at a crematorium with undocumented remains or why a school might be reluctant to receive the same.

Glad you have it sorted, OP.

Great news OP. I'm glad this post has a happy ending and that his cranial foramina will be put to good use once more.

That's a great outcome OP

Although this thread will still carry on with people suggesting different ways to bury it etc.

Leave it on a bench at any platform for Southern Rail

Although this thread will still carry on with people suggesting different ways to bury it etc
Oh come on! Some are just fun suggestions. I particularly like the one waiting for a train!.

This is a really interesting thread. I'm at med school and was offered one by a family friend a few years ago, having read this I'm quite glad I said no. Thank you for passing it onto the next generation, it's very much appreciated.