Stiff written by author Mary Roach gives the reader an insight into

Stiff, written by author Mary Roach gives the reader an insight into the world of a cadaver and their significant role in the medical/ sciences fields. Roach wanted her readers to change their opinions about death, by realizing the numerous options a dead body can undergo and get a more valued afterlife. It might change the perception of the reader by making death not to seem like a terrible upcoming event in one’s lives. Roach researched the bodies donated to science, and what resulted of them in numerous studies.

She put various information and sources in each chapter to support the research behind each cadaver use and went to the sites of the tested cadavers to see the experiments. Roach first journaled her research at attending pre-medical universities to encounter pre-surgical experiments, next, did studying on the history of cadavers in past anatomical studies, also visited numerous scientists to give sources in her book. She even was astounded in one encounter where the scientist explained how science could tell when officially the body starts to die and if a soul exists.

Roach wanted Stiff to be fully informative and provided many examples to back her argument in the indulgement of human dissection/ testing. When looking closely into the testing of the bodies for car accidents and trials of new army weaponry on humans, Roach tries to exemplify that the cadavers help to further expand the human knowledge on living humans. More lasting effects come from cadavers in that they are motionless replicas of the human body, and more results can get found in a cadaver as opposed to a living being.

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In many ways, cadaver experimentation is changing the world every day and should get widely more accepted for its uses are universally beneficial.

Many of Roaches vocal points are in her fourth chapter “dead man driving” where she witnesses researchers use cadavers as car test dummies for the improvement of future car safety and impact studies. Roaches outputs to the studies are that although it is unorthodox, it is entirely justifiable. “Because of changes that have come about as a result of cadaver studies, it is now possible to survive a head-on crash into a wall at 60 mph,” states Roach. She wants the reader to know that many vehicle safety improvements have come about as a result of cadaver research. Cadavers have given scientists a better understanding of how an injury is suffered, particularly to the brain and nervous system. Safer windshields and steering wheels are the result. Although cadaver research has been proven controversial, it became clear that the best stand-in for a human is a cadaver. The bodies get strapped into cars that get smashed into other cars, walls and various barriers to measuring the impact on humans, with the help of cameras and electronic sensors.

In a “How cadavers made your car safer” article by wired staff, said that in a more recent study by ford, the company has been promoting the inflatable rear seat belts in the 2011 Explorer. Ford says, “The feature provides five times the protection of a conventional belt.” However what is “less promoted is the fact human cadavers played a role in their development,” states the wired staff. The article also included the process of testing a cadaver with the new fords seat belt. First “researchers swaddle the body in stockings, including one over its face, for scientific reasons. (Next)The arms and hands, if still attached, are bound in place to keep them from moving during a simulated crash, and sensors record the forces on various parts. After the test, researchers would use x-rays and autopsies to examine how much damage the cadaver sustained.”

In the chapter Roach also included Albert King’s 1995 journal of trauma article entitled “Humanitarian Benefits of Cadaver Research” in which states that cadaver experimentation has “saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seatbelts, 61 lives per year have gotten saved.” Also that “for every cadaver that took an airbag to the face, 147 people per year survive other-wise fatal head-ons, and every corpse whose head has hammered a windshield, 68 lives per year got saved.” The associated press further backs the research on cadavers in stating “the automobile industry commission studies to determine the effects of crashes on the human body. Saving those in the future with the help of cadavers.”

Roach also talks about the controversies in the endorsement of human cadavers over car test dummies. For the past previous years, the dead has helped the living work out human tolerance limits and improve the standard of driving. In car experimentation where scientists have worked with car test dummies they have found that “ a dummy can tell you how much force a crash is unleashing on various dummy parts, but without knowing how much of a blow a real body part can take, the information is useless.” That is why a cadaver has much more value because of its a human representation of where in the body certain accidents will injure. Only a cadaver can find out “ the maximum amount a rib cage can compress without damaging the soft, wet things inside it is two ? inches,” mentions Roach. In order to design cars, automobile manufacturers need to know information on how much force a skull or spine or shoulder can withstand, and not exceed human tolerance force. To find this information they would have to study on the human anatomy and car accident analysis, a car test dummy would not help because its made out of artificial material and not replicate the damages in human tissue or internal organs. The cadavers essentially do the jobs for a living, for they endure all the violent experimentation a being would not resist.

Human cadavers are not only used in car accident safety for the army also value its purposes for a better future of military soldiers