Brave mum who died of rare type of cancer becomes UK first to be dissected on TV
8 November 2022, 00:58 | Updated: 8 November 2022, 09:08
A mum who died from a rare type of cancer has become the UK’s first named person to be publicly dissected on TV in a bid to save future generations.
Toni Crews, who lived in Deal, Kent, with her two children passed away in 2020 aged 30 from adenocarcinoma – a rate type of cancer that develops in the tear gland and spreads across the face.
However, before she died she bravely gifted her body to science to help educate millions of people on the horrible disease by allowing her body to be dissected on Channel 4’s programme ‘My Dead Body’ which will air next month.
Toni’s story began in 2016 when she was first diagnosed with cancer which led to an operation to remove her eye.
The vicious disease then returned, more aggressively, in 2018 which led Toni to begin a campaign of raising awareness about the cancer type.
In the show, Toni will narrate her own story about her cancer journey as Professor Claire Smith – the head of anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School – leads a series of workshops in which different parts of Toni’s body will be dissected and examined.
The professor admits she was nervous about the show, saying she’s never performed a dissection like Toni’s before, but she said, she felt ‘privileged to explore the journey of cancer through the incredible donation made by Toni’.
My Dead Body comes 20 years after Channel 4 made history with its Autopsy programme. In it, Professor Gunther Von Hagens carried out a post mortem on a 72-year-old German man.
