致敬！87岁老妇为科研“献身”遗体被切成27000块薄片（双语）

　　很多人都不能接受遗体捐献，但一名87岁的美国老妇不仅捐出了自己的遗体，还做出了一个大胆的决定。在老妇离世后，她的遗体在冷冻后被切成比头发丝还纤细的27000块薄片，每一片的生物信息都被记录下来保存在数据库中，成为不朽的“数字遗体”。

　　Vic Spitzer, director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, examines Potter's frozen cadaver.

　　Susan Potter knew before she died that she, or at least her body, would make history: Not only would hers be the first diseased cadaver (and one containing a titanium hip) to be frozen, sliced up and digitized for all to study, but she also came with a detailed backstory.

　　苏珊·波特在去世前就知道了，她，更确切的说是她的身体，会创造历史：她的遗体不仅将成为第一个被冷冻、切片并被数字化以用于研究的患病遗体(附带一个钛合金的髋部)，还会有一个详细的背景解说。

　　That's because the Texas woman, when she proposed to doctors that her body be immortalized for medical students, thought she would die in the near future. She lived another 15 years, during which every bit of her life was documented.

　　这位来自美国德克萨斯州的老妇人，在自认为不久于人世时向医生提议，让她的身体在医学研究中得到永生。在那以后她又活了15年，在这期间她生命中的点点滴滴都被记录了下来。

　　Potter is the subject of a profile published as part of the upcoming January 2019 issue of National Geographic. The profile focuses on Potter, her personality and what drove her to become, as the author of the story called her, "an immortal corpse." And, unusually, Potter's personality will also be part of how future medical students encounter her corpse.

　　波特是《国家地理》杂志2019年1月刊人物特辑的主角，其中介绍了她的性格，及成为“不朽遗体”的历程。而且，与以往不同的是，波特的性格也将成为今后的医学生们对她遗体的研究的一部分。

　　The slicing-her-up-into-27,000-pieces bit is a purely practical project. Those pieces, each three times too thin for a human eye to detect its edge, have since been scanned into a computer, forming a kind of scrollable digital record of her body at the time of death.

　　将遗体切成27000片则是一个纯粹出于实用目的的项目。那些即使放大三倍也无法用肉眼辨别边缘的薄片被扫描到计算机中，构成了波特死亡时可滚动的数字记录。

　　It's now part of the Visible Human Project, an effort to create digital cadavers that students can dissect on their computer screens, over and over again. But unlike previous cadavers in the project, Potter's will come with video recordings of her in life, talking about her illnesses and the medical decisions that left their marks on her body.

　　这是“可视化人体项目”的一部分，这项计划旨在创造“数字化遗体”，以便于医学生们能够通过电脑屏幕反复地进行细致研究。但是不同于项目中以往记录的遗体，波特的记录还附有她在世时的录像，录像中她谈论了她的病情及各种医疗方案在她身上留下的“印记”。

　　cadaver[kə'dævɚ]: n. [医] 遗体;死尸

　　Potter wasn't the first person recorded into the Visible Human Project library, as National Geographic reported. That accolade goes to Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 39-year-old man chosen because he died unnaturally, executed by the state of Texas. So his remains made for a good example of a healthy-seeming body, unusual among people in a position to donate their corpses to medical science. He was chopped into just 2,000 slices, each a millimeter thick, in 1993. A second, 59-year-old female, her name unknown, was chopped into 5,000 0.33-mm slices a year later, after she died of heart disease.

　　根据《国家地理》的报道，波特并非“可视化人体项目”中的第一人，这个称号归于约瑟夫·保罗·杰尼根，一位在得克萨斯州被处决的39岁男性。不同于那些捐献给医疗研究的遗体，他是非自然死亡的，所以他的遗体是健康的人体样本。该男子在1993年被切割成2000片1毫米厚度的薄片。第二位参加该项目的是一位59岁的不知名女性，在因心脏病去世后的一年，被切割成5000片0.33毫米厚的薄片。