Controversy: what are the "corpses farms" where human bodies break down in the open air

WARNING: This article contains explicit images and descriptions that may affect the sensitivity of some people.

In the middle of a green and uniform grbad, stand out bushes of about one meter in height.

They are taller than the others, because the piece of land they grow on feeds on substances that have released human corpses that have rotten for several weeks.

From afar it looks like an ideal meadow to walk around, but when you enter the bushes, a strong, deadly smell makes your eyes watery. The day is sunny and they feel more than 30º of temperature, the air is humid and heavy.

On this land of just over one hectare, 15 human bodies are scattered. They are all naked, some locked in metal cages, others covered with a blue plastic, others buried and others directly outside.

This is what is called a "corpse farm", although scientists prefer to call it a forensic cemetery or a taphonomy lab, which is the area that studies the fate of d & # 39; 39, an organism after his death.

Each body forms a dead grbad silhouette, but then, on the same ground, a vigorous bush will grow larger than the others.

It is an open-air anthropological anthropology laboratory at the University of South Florida (USF), which has been present in Pasco County since 2017, 25 minutes from the city of Tampa.

It is located in a rural area, next to the county jail.

People usually call it a "corpse farm", although scientists prefer to call it a forensic cemetery or a taphonomy lab, which is the area that studies the fate of an organism. after his death.

The farmhouse of the USF is one of seven in the United States. There are also in Australia and countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, it is planned to open its first farms this year.

It is a place dedicated to science, but watering human corpses is a challenge to the rituals we usually have with regard to death.

In fact, this "farm" was originally to be located in Hillsborough County, about 80 km from Pasco, but the neighbors opposed the project because they feared the arrival of collectors, their properties would lose value because they resist the stench of rotting bodies.

Reserves against this type of laboratory do not come only from people who do not want to live near dead people; even within the scientific community there are people who doubt the need and the scientific value of the corpses farms.

Decaying body

The farmhouse of the USF is one of seven in the United States. There are also in Australia and countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, it is planned to open its first farms this year.

The corpses that are on the USF farm were people who, before dying, had decided to make a voluntary donation of their bodies to science. In other cases, it is the parents of the deceased who decide to entrust the body to a medical examiner.

The main purpose of these places is to understand how the human body breaks down and what is happening in the environment that surrounds it during this process.

Understanding this process provides key data to solve crimes or improve people identification techniques.

"When someone dies, a lot of things happen at the same time," Erin Kimmerle, director of the Forensic Anthropology Institute at USF, told BBC News. "This occurs since the natural decomposition, until the arrival of insects and changes in ecology".

Kimmerle and her team believe that the best way to understand everything that is happening is to observe it in real time, with real bodies in a real environment.

As Kimmerle explains, the human body usually goes through four stages after death.

In the first stage, called "fresh body", the temperature of the corpse decreases and the blood that stops circulating accumulates in certain parts of the body.

Then, during "early decomposition", the bacteria begin to consume the tissues and begin to notice changes in the skin color. In the third stage, the "advanced decomposition", the gases accumulate, the body swells and the tissues break.

Finally, begins the "skeletonization" which is manifested first on the face, hands and feet. In certain conditions of humidity and other factors, the body can be mummified.

However, these steps are influenced by the environment in which the body is located, which is of interest for forensics.

Precious data

On the farm of the USF, some bodies are surrounded by metal cages to protect them from scavengers. The cage prevents them from being eaten by opossums and vultures, so the medical examiner can study the process of tissue decomposition. They also observe the action of worms, which feed on the internal organs of the body, but not on the skin.

On the other hand, other bodies are fully exposed, at the mercy of scavengers that arrive in groups of up to 50 specimens. They make holes in the skin, tear the muscles and tissues and even turn the body to eat as much as possible.

While this is happening, researchers visit the farm every day to take pictures and videos, observe the evolution of the body and compare the process of each according to its location and location, whether buried, on the surface or even in the water.

Geologists and geophysicists work with forensic science to badyze soil, water, air and vegetation. They are interested in knowing how the substances released by the inert body modify the properties of the place where they decompose.

"We try to get as much information from each individual," Kimmerle says.

When bodies are no longer just skeletons, they are transported in what forensic scientists call a "dry lab", where they clean the bones and store them for the benefit of students and researchers.

Unresolved crimes

The data collected by Taphonomy researchers is useful for forensic and forensic investigations.

The way a body is broken down serves to clarify the estimate of the time elapsed since death or to determine whether the body has been moved or buried.

The substances it releases and the condition of the corpse also give clues to the origin of the person. This, together with other genetic data and bone badysis, provides information that can be applied in unresolved criminal cases.

This is why part of the mission of these farms is to provide services to the authorities who are trying to clarify the homicides.

For many, it can be shocking to work daily with the harshness of death and to see human bodies in a state that we normally prefer to hide.

For Kimmerle, however, it's not what disturbs her the most. "As a science professional, you learn to separate from this link," he says, referring to the taboo that often accompanies the subject of death.

"We are conducting a lot of homicide investigations, so the hardest part is dealing with really tragic stories," he said. "For me, the most horrible thing is to (see) what one person is capable of doing to another."

He also mentions that it is difficult to confront the stories of families who lost their children 20 or 30 years ago and are still looking for their remains.

For her, her work makes sense as it helps to clarify some of the nearly 250,000 unsolved crimes that have existed in the United States since 1980.

Who are these corpses?

Since its opening in October 2017, the forensic cemetery has received 50 donor bodies and has a list of 180 pre-donors, ie living persons who have already decided that, when they die, they would like to devote themselves to science.

Donors are mainly seniors who are already planning their last years of life.

"It's like planning your post-mortem profession," says Kimmerle. It's as if donors are helping to solve crimes after death.

Among the restrictions that exist to donate the body, one should not contract an infectious disease that could endanger those who will later study the body.

An emerging science

Farm bodies provide data to science, but they also have limitations.

Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a biological anthropologist at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, is generally in favor of this type of laboratory, but says it is still an emerging science.

"The problem with these open-pit facilities is that they have a lot of variables they can not control, but just monitor," Randolph-Quinney told BBC Mundo.

"This makes the data that they produce much more difficult to interpret because they do not lend themselves easily to predictions."

For the anthropologist, the challenge of forensic cemeteries is to move from anecdotal evidence to more standardized ways of collecting information and share it with other researchers to obtain more meaningful results. statistical.

Sue Black, forensic anthropologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, also expresses her reservations. An article in the journal Nature mentions that Black calls into question the scientific value of these fields, because his studies are based on small samples and very variable results.

Nature also cites a book that Black published in 2018, in which he describes the farmhouse as "macabre and macabre concept".

Kimmerle, meanwhile, sees a promising future for these labs, and thinks that in the years to come, there will be more and more in various parts of the world.

"Anyone who understands this type of research, its depth and importance in practical applications, will see that it is very necessary," Kimmerle concludes.

Carlos Serrano (@carliserrano) – © BBC Mundo

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