CU Anschutz In The News

When Susan Potter decided to donate her body to science, she wanted to make an impact on humanity. "This will be my last will and testament," she said in a 2002 interview. "To leave something behind that would have an impact on the human race." Potter died in 2015, but thanks to groundbreaking technology and a long collaboration with University of Colorado scientist Vic Spitzer, she'll live on for generation of medical students. More than a decade before her death, Potter approached Spitzer, who heads CU's Center for Human Simulation, and asked to donate her body to science.

Susan Potter wanted to make a difference in life and in death. “That was my last will and testament: to leave something behind that would have an impact on the whole human race,” she said in a video for the CU School of Medicine. So, she decided to donate her body to science. She had seen a newspaper article about the Visible Human Project. After their death, a man and woman were frozen, sectioned and photographed for the world to see and learn from on the internet. Susan decided she wanted to do that, too, so she tracked down the man in charge at the CU School of Medicine. Vic Spitzer, PhD, eventually agreed to take her on. “She just persisted,” he said.

For the last 14 years, National Geographic has followed Dr. Vic Spitzer, a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz, and Susan Potter on her journey from life to becoming a "living cadaver." “Susan, like a lot of donors, came to CU to donate her body,” Spitzer said. “She saw a newspaper article about the visible human and sectioning the body so she seemed to understand what it meant to slice her body up into many pieces.”

"One of the realities of aging, and illnesses that are more common with age, is that our abilities change," said Dr. Hillary Lum of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. "Activities that we've done our entire lives, such as driving, managing our own finances, and owning and using a gun, can also be affected," Lum told Reuters Health by email.

The Colorado School of Public Health and the Colorado School of Mines released the results of the first widespread blood tests of residents in southern El Paso County. In doing so, the researchers strengthened the link between the chemicals found in Widefield aquifer and Peterson Air Force Base’s use of the foam. “If you’ve lived here for a long time and you’ve been drinking the city water, particularly in Security, where the levels are highest, there’s a good chance your levels are elevated,” said John Adgate, a Colorado School of Public Health researcher who led the study.

For the last 15 years of her life, Potter carried a card with these words: “It is my wish to have my body used for purposes similar to those used in the Visible Human Project, namely that photographic images might be used on the Internet for medical education … In the event of my death … page Dr. Victor M. Spitzer, Ph.D. … There is a 4-hour window for the remains to be received.” Potter knew because she visited the room where her body would be taken, saw the machinery that would grind her tissue away one paper-thin section at a time for imaging, and heard Spitzer, the director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, explain the process more than a decade before she died. Spitzer didn’t volunteer to show her the room; Potter demanded it.

The new Institute will work directly with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and other leading research organizations to understand the dynamic balancing act of the human immune system, how it senses friend from foe and what goes wrong when we’re ill. Kevin Deane, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael Holers, M.D., investigators at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, will lead a collaboration with colleagues at the University of California San Diego. The fundamental goal of the research program is to identify novel mechanisms by which rheumatoid arthritis develops so that the disease can be halted before symptoms begin, and if not, reversed to the normal state once arthritis begins.