Human body donation programs best practices and recommended standards: A task force report from the American Association for Anatomy

Abstract

The American Association for Anatomy recently charged a task force with updating and expanding upon best practices and recommendations for human body donation programs. The task force comprised American Association for Anatomy members with specific and detailed knowledge about the legal, ethical, and procedural operations of body donation programs in the United States. The task force developed both foundational and aspirational recommendations. These recommendations emphasize the importance of prioritizing the ethical treatment of all body donors across all education and research sectors. Programs must adhere to several principles to operate an ethical body donation program, the foundation of which is informed consent. The policies and procedures of donation programs must clearly and transparently describe their core operational practices including outreach, registration, custody tracking, use, disposition, and memorialization. Such programs should be governed by a diverse oversight committee whose members are not directly responsible for the program's daily operations. These standards require that all body donation programs follow all national, state, and local laws in the program's jurisdiction. The following recommendations for body donation programs were approved by the Board of Directors of the American Association for Anatomy in 2024 and were conceived as a living document intended to be periodically modified and updated as the ethos and legislation of body donations evolve. Given the importance of these recommendations, translations of this document into Chinese and Spanish are available as supplementary materials S2 and S3.

Keywords: anatomical gift programs; body donation; ethics; informed consent; oversight.