2018 Mississippi Code
Title 41 - Public Health
Chapter 39 - Disposition of Human Bodies or Parts
In General
§ 41-39-7. Bodies of deceased hospital patients to be turned over to educational institutions in certain cases.

Upon the request of the Secretary of the State Board of Health, the authorities in charge of the hospitals supported either wholly or partly by state funds are authorized and directed to deliver any body of any person, except the bodies of persons with mental illness and persons with an intellectual disability, dying in any of those hospitals to the duly authorized representatives of the state university or any medical college or any accredited mortuary science program in any junior college in this state, giving the state university preference in the event there is an insufficiency in dissecting material for the use of all hospitals for anatomical purposes. This applies to the remains of any person, except persons with mental illness and persons with an intellectual disability, who dies in any of those hospitals, when the body is not, within a reasonable time after death, claimed for burial by some fraternal order, or by some person related to the deceased by blood or marriage, or by some friend. The State Board of Health shall have authority to adopt regulations for the proper burial of those persons with mental illness and persons with an intellectual disability. However, the human remains of any unknown person who is a traveler dying suddenly shall not be so delivered or used for anatomical purposes. Any human remains, so delivered, shall be properly and decently removed from the hospital, at the expense of the party to whom the same may be delivered, and shall be transported under such regulations as the State Board of Health may prescribe, and after use for strictly necessary medical study, in the medical department of the university, or in any medical college, or in any accredited mortuary science program in any junior college in this state, as the case may be, the body shall be decently interred or may be cremated and the residue interred at the expense of the party using the same. The State Board of Health shall have authority to regulate and restrict the use of dead bodies used for the above purposes. The authorities of the hospitals, the Secretary of the State Board of Health, and the authorities of the university, any medical college and any accredited mortuary science program in any junior college in this state, shall each cause a record to be kept of each body used and disposed of, under the provisions of this section, and such records shall be subject to inspection of any member of the State Board of Health at any time.