BESTSELLING crime writer Peter James is offering a `dead good’ dinner to one lucky donor to the University of Dundee’s`Million For A Morgue’ campaign.
A further £1 million is needed to build the morgue which will allow researchers to adopt the Thiel method of embalming, and through it, contribute to scientific research. The university has already contributed one million.
Everyone who registers a vote in ’Million For a Morgue’ before the end of December will go into a draw for the prize. There are ten prizes over the next ten months and each vote costs £1.
The morgue will be built at Dundee’s world-renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, (CAHID) headed by Professor Sue Black.
The new building will allow Professor Black and her team at CAHID to adopt the Thiel method of embalming. This gives surgeons, dentists, students and medical researchers a more realistic method of testing techniques, practising procedures and developing new equipment and approaches.
Professor Black said: “We will be the first University in the UK to exclusively use Thiel embalming and it is an area where, working together with other colleagues in the University, we can make real breakthroughs and change the face of scientific, medical and dental research and training,” said Professor Black.
Some examples of the CAHID’s work include: The team having developed groundbreaking techniques in areas such as hand identification, which has directly led to the successful prosecution of a number of paedophiles identified from images of their hands found in obscene photographs and films.
The Centre also runs a major training programme in Disaster Victim Identification, which has trained police offers in practical techniques in human identification, enabling them to be deployed to help identify victims of mass fatalities anywhere in the world.
Professor Black and other members of the CAHID team featured in the major BBC2 series `History Cold Case’.
Peter, author of the Roy Grace novels, is one of ten authors supporting the campaign. The author with the most votes will have the new morgue named after them.
Peter has also donated a signed hardback copy of his latest novel `Perfect People’ to give away to another lucky voter. Each month the winner will receive a special prize and a signed book from each of the authors taking part.
He said: “I can promise a dead good dinner, to be eaten in a considerably more salubrious environment than a mortuary and with a full-bodied wine that has come from a fine vine and not a human vein,”
Anyone who wants to donate and vote in the campaign can do so by visiting the website at www.millionforamorgue.com.
