There are many parts of yourself that you can recycle:
- Blood. As long as you’re in good health and meet age/weight ideals, blood is taken every few months and screened, to save lives in medicine.
- Breast milk. Usually supply and demand (so you won’t run out for your own baby), this is again screened and used to save the lives of preemies (premature babies who often have delicate guts). If a mother is unable to breastfeed, the next best thing is the breastmilk of another woman.
- Body donation! is a great way to help reduce animal testing. Cadavers are needed to find cures for disease (healthy bodies too as you need a healthy brain to compare with one from someone who died of dementia). Usually religious views are respected and some even add prosthetics for open caskets etc, if wished. Read of reasons only to give to humane medical research.
- Your hair. This is usually used to make free hairpieces for children undergoing chemotherapy or who have alopecia. Obviously grey hair and coloured hair (like pink!) is not accepted. But most other hair is. The charities have notes on how to send to them for processing.
The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers looks at leftover body parts that still hang around like wisdom teeth, goosebumps and hiccups! This illustrated tour is the perfect book to engage children in science and evolution. Tour guides Wisdom Tooth and Disappearing Kidney lead readers through a whacky museum to find body parts that were essential to our ancestors but are no longer useful to us (appendix?) though they are still hanging around.
Each room in the museum shows us that these parts have stories to tell us about our past. By the time we make it to the gift shop, we’ll see that evolution is not just messy and imperfect, but also ongoing. Engaging and hilarious, and a visual treat.
how donated toenails can help rhinos!
Did you know that boffins are now creating DNA-identical rhino horns made from donated human toenails?! This sounds daft, but it’s possibly going to stop rhinos going extinct. Because idiots who pay thousands of dollars for horn are not going to do it, if the market is flooded horns made from toenails!
