News Reporter
Southeast of Grand Junction’s city limits, a one-acre plot of land owned by CMU has been fenced off, topped with barbed wire and put under video surveillance. Other than the 2,700 sq. ft. building in the vicinity, there seems to be no sign of human life, and that’s because the new Forensic Investigation Research Station is intended to serve as a ‘body farm.’
“The facility allows us to look at how bodies decay in a natural setting post mortem to construct predictions for how individuals died,” CMU professor and Director of the Research Station Dr. Melissa Connor said.
While perhaps a bit uncomfortable, the project is part of a relatively new field of science called forensic pathology. Since its official recognition in the United States back in 1959, five other centers have been constructed in the United States.
CMU has been persuing the idea for a couple of years now, but things have really started to pick up since Connor came into the picture last August.
“We have the potential to be the sixth in the entire nation,” Connor said. “And when I say in the nation I really mean worldwide. Cultural perceptions of death, available resources, population density and a variety of other factors make it difficult to set something like this up.”
At the moment, no human remains are actually on site. However, a few pigs have been buried to simulate the process. Connor explained that pigs are used because they don’t have body hair like most other animals and because humans share similar intestinal bacteria.
“What makes the one here so unique is our high elevation and arid atmosphere,” Connor said. “I suspect once the bodies decompose, bones will dry at a more rapid rate, particularly because of the cold weather.”
While the University is still waiting for the Attorney General to verify that all Colorado safety laws and regulations have been upheld, the Research Center has already started receiving donation calls.
“We have people from within the community, across the state and even outside the state who have called to donate their bodies,” Connor said. “I’d estimate more than a dozen. Forms have to be filled out, and it’s the responsibility of the donor to inform the individual handling their estate where they want their body to end up, unless they carry a communicable disease. We don’t take bodies with communicable diseases.”
In addition to meeting with water management companies to ensure waste and pollution is put out as safely as any other building, Connor has been hard at work constructing a new Forensic Anthropology minor that students can expect to start enrolling in come next fall.
“Once the bodies decay, students will be able to take the bones into our lab to create an anthropological collection,” Connor said. “When you watch the TV show Bones and they’re trying to identify someone based off skeletal remains, their conclusions are based on the data we’ll be providing in this very building.”
Connor believes that this kind of professional application will allow students to see how what their learning in class ultimately transcends into solving real world problems.
As if that weren’t enough, Connor has already been approached by half a dozen researches unaffiliated with CMU asking for permission to conduct independent research. That’s a request Connor is happy to allow if researchers are willing to take on her own students as assistants.
“I think the facility will definitely increase our portrayal in the scholarly world,” Connor said. “More importantly, it will be a unique program that undergraduate students here at CMU will always remember. It’s just one of the many things that makes this campus so great.”
cferganc@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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