An HKU survey found that 51 percent of Hong Kong residents who had heard of the concept of donating their bodies to science are willing to do so.
Of the 638 people surveyed by telephone, 84 percent said they had heard of body donation.
Therefore about 43 percent of Hongkongers are very bravely willing to hand over their cold, hard bodies to scientists and teenage medical students.
HKU professor Chan Lap-ki, the study’s chief investigator, said the survey demonstrates that Hong Kong society knows about the concept of body donation, and that “Hong Kong people [are] altruistic.”
The last statement is a bit of a strong conclusion to make from a telephone survey asking people if they’re willing to donate something that will be completely useless to them after they die, but okay.
“Although death and human body dissection are still taboos in Asian culture,” continued Chan, “we can still see that many HK people are willing to donate their body in order to help medical education and research, and they also want to contribute to the world even after death.”
Your body: the gift that keeps on giving!
Photo: US Army RDECOM via Flickr
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