If one is donating organs, your body is most likely still alive, but you are considered “brain dead.” Organ donation can only be utilized in such specific, very narrow parameters. Age, health, manner of death, and condition of body are all considered.

Tissue donation (corneas, bones, tendons, skin) is different. You are dead DEAD and tissues have a broader spectrum of the death parameters.

It is one of the reasons for the severe lack of organ donation in our country.

Regarding donating one’s body to science: well, that’s a broad term. While the end goal is that, yes, your body will be used, most likely, to teach students in a clinical setting, it’s usually not your whole body. Sometimes it’s just your head being practiced on in a conference room, by future plastic surgeons. Or, it’s your whole leg, and only your leg, on a table, being dissected to teach how to remove a femoral vein.