At Public Expense When The Money Is Gone

Often, they are mentally ill but capable of functioning on their own. And they die alone, surrounded by neighbors who don't know them. Next of kin? Who could say?

The Cook County Morgue is responsible for handling the dead bodies of those who have no next of kin, no estate to pay for burial, or no known identity.

In the past, when there was money in the system, the morgue would store the bodies and hope that someone would notice a relative had gone missing.

At the end of a year, unclaimed remains were crated up in cheap pine boxes, loaded into a truck, and carted off to a mass grave which the Cook County taxpayers funded.

No one put a lot of effort into noting the exact location of each individual corpse, so if relatives did turn up much later, it was highly likely that their dear departed's body wouldn't be found. If the Cook County Sheriff wished to claim a body for a criminal investigation, well, good luck with that.

Like everyplace else, Cook County is out of cash and looking at ways to save money.

The unclaimed dead aren't going to complain.

From now on, bodies stored in the morgue for two weeks are going to be donated to the Anatomical Gift Association. Medical students, student nurses, and the like, will dissect the bodies and further their education.

At the end of the anatomy class, the unclaimed pieces will be cremated and buried, all on the Anatomical Gift Association's dime.

How much will this tactic save the county?

It's hard to say, because bodies that are decomposed, over three hundred pounds, or HIV-positive can't be used.

Many of the elderly who die alone are not found for days or weeks, their passing often noted by the unpleasant scent of decomposition. Drug addicts who are discovered in abandoned buildings aren't likely to be sliced and diced by future doctors either. As many as 60% of the bodies brought to the morgue are autopsied, and those are useless for anatomical study.

Oddly enough, the Sheriff's complaint about bodies buried without sufficient documentation isn't going to improve when all he might be able to recover is a small box filled with ashes.

But the County will save the taxpayers at least some of the expense of burying the dead who have no known relatives, as long as those indigent few have the decency to not be obese, and die someplace where their corpses can be quickly recovered, the cause of death obvious.

To think that the study of human anatomy once relied on grave-robbing. Now the county can't even afford the grave.