In 2000, Susan Potter—a cancer survivor and a disability rights activist—became the third body donor to the project, spending the 15 following years until her death by pneumonia in 2015 as an outspoken advocate for medical education and a mentor of medical students at the University of Colorado. For nearly two decades, National Geographic documented the story of Susan Potter and Dr. Victor M. Spitzer, the director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus who led the NIH-funded project, releasing a video documentary in 2018. By the time Potter met Spitzer in 2000, she had gone through 26 surgeries and had been diagnosed with melanoma, breast cancer and diabetes: her participation in the Visible Human Project marked a significant departure from the original goals of the project, which up until then had only focused on the dissection and imaging of healthy bodies.