Report raises issues about cadaver crash tests

By Aaron Lee
Media General News Service
Published: November 26, 2008

A Kansas City, Mo., television station’s recent report on human cadaver research spotlights the University of Virginia’s policy on notifying families as to how the remains are being used.

At UVa the bulk of cadavers donated are used for medical research, but there are instances where cadavers are used by UVa’s Center for Applied Biomechanics, officials said.

The TV report focused on families of deceased relatives who had donated their bodies for medical research, but said they were not fully informed that the research might include vehicle crash tests.

The report, however, pointed to UVa’s practice of fully notifying next of kin and giving them an option to rule out crash tests as a potential use for the cadaver.

Initially, according to the Virginia Department of Health, any donated bodies are received by the State Anatomical Program. If a body comes to UVa for research it is the school’s policy to contact the person’s family to tell them how the body will be used.

At the Center for Applied Biomechanics, researchers use the cadavers to test how bodies react in car crashes, in an effort to improve vehicle safety. Researchers use the bodies in tandem with crash-test dummies and computer simulations to create better crash-test computer simulations that Jeff Crandall, director of the center, hopes will completely replace cadaver use in the future.

“We’ve actually chosen voluntarily to actually go through and talk to the next of kin and allow them an opportunity to ask any questions about the type of research ... tell them the benefits about the research that we do,” Crandall said. ”This gift is actually helping to save lives and so that’s one of the things we try to demonstrate with the families.”

Crandall said families give their consent 90 percent of the time after hearing about the UVa center’s research. He estimates the center does testing with cadavers, on average, less than once a month. In comparison, the center does hundreds of tests using dummies and thousands of computer-simulated tests each year.

David Hudson, associate vice president for the office of the vice president for research, said using the cadavers not only helps researchers develop better computer simulation models but also allows for creating dummies better than those first tested in the 1970s.

“You have to know what mechanical loads, what accelerations, what decelerations, what stresses, what strains will cause what injuries,” Hudson said. “And when you know that, you can build proper dummies.”

Dummies that he and Crandall said represent today’s population.

“People today are bigger and they weigh more, so the construction of the dummy needs to be able to take that into account,” Hudson said. “You need to have the anatomical data to be able to back up the design. When you’ve got that, you can diminish your use of bodies, of cadavers.”