Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Donating My Body to Science

When I was younger, I wanted to be buried intact. I'm not sure why anymore. After I'm dead, I'm dead (hard to argue with logic like that). I became an organ donor through a sign-up project in college. I probably have a pretty good heart & lungs right now...hopefully it'll stay that way. Anyway, donating your body to science postmortem and being an organ donor are mutually exclusive.

Although it wasn't an explicit attempt to donate my body to science, I began to think about my participation in an FSU exercise physiology experiment as such. I pretty much just ran on a treadmill for these people while they monitored my exhaust gases and heart rate. My only sacrifice was time...and dietary control for a couple days. I think that this may be the best way for me to participate in the experimental (hard) science community unless\until I get my degree in chemistry.

It's too bad I'm ineligible to participate in economics experiments because they pay good money. I didn't get any monetary compensation for my participation in the exercise phys. study, but they did tell me what my VO2 max is, which made doing all the other work worthwhile.

I like the idea of contributing to the repertoire of knowledge through my personal efforts. I told the exercise phys. people that I am willing to participate in future experiments involving running or biking since I'm not fast enough for any of their swim studies (yet). It might also be fun to participate in a psych study or two since there's all these human subjects regulations to keep them from injecting me with crazy viruses or causing me permanent harm.

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