Someone who donates their body to scientific research might have a reasonable expectation their remains will be put to some useful purpose.
Training medical students, perhaps. Even being turned into a crash-test dummy might ultimately save lives. Whatever the science-minded deceased might have expected, being turned into a grotesque sideshow for well-heeled hipsters in America’s “progressive” capital is surely not on their list.
Yet, that’s what happened to David Saunders.
A World War II veteran and Hurricane Katrina survivor, 98-year-old David Saunders lived a long, admirable life. Before dying of COVID-19 in August, he demanded his body be used for science. His wife Elsie ensured as much, but then discovered that he had been dissected in front of a paying audience in Portland, Oregon.
No doubt promoters dressed this up as a “science” event, but in reality, it’s little better than a modern Grand Guignol stunt.
The macabre event occurred at the Marriott Downtown Waterfront hotel on Oct. 17, 2021. According to KING 5, audience members paid up to $500 for the in-person autopsy. Performed by retired professor of anatomy from the University of Montana in Missoula, Dr. Colin Henderson, the dissection left Elsie Saunders in shock.
Dr. Henderson cut into the limbs, chest cavity, and head. He removed organs like the brain before inviting the tantalized audience to inspect his work.
In the words of Saunders’ distraught widow, her husband’s body was treated as little more than “a performing bear or something”.
Saunders was adamant his body be donated to medical research. His wife thus contacted Louisiana State University to do so when he died, but was turned away, as they didn’t accept COVID victims. In a fateful turn of events, Mike Clark, of Baton Rouge’s Church Funeral Services and Crematory, suggested an alternative.
Clark had prepared the body after Saunders died and believed Med Ed Labs was an appropriate firm to satisfy his wishes.
What Clark didn’t know was that Med Ed Labs on-sold Saunders’ body to one Jeremy Ciliberto, the founder of a company called “Death Science”. Except that precious little “science” was involved. Saunders ended up as part of a travelling “Oddities and Curiosities Expo”.
Mike Clarke said he would track the body down for her and provide a cremation free of charge — and has ceased all work with Med Ed Labs.
“I was totally horrified,” said Clark. “Our whole staff was horrified…It makes me really feel saddened that this gentleman was not given the dignity and the respect that he deserved and what he thought and his family thought that would be happening to his body.”
All That’s Interesting
Meanwhile, residents of a city that, more than any other, is the home-base of millennial hipsters who boast about “fighting fascism”, paid through the nose to gawk and poke at the dismembered remains of someone who really did fight actual fascism. David Saunders fought for freedom from totalitarianism in both Europe and Korea.
And ended up as a freak-show for “progressives”.
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