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Comment by zac_hudson | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, its surprising that this school allows what would apparently be the lay public gain access to human anatomical gifts. In Canada, this is restricted to persons with a legitimate interest, ie med students and grad students in bioengineering/bio-adjacent fields.

I think that the author is not an individual with such an interest was quite clear from the tone taken on this piece - most discussions involving cadavers are quite respectful of the fact that they are working on the mortal remains of a person; for some reason the way this piece was written felt almost disrespectful.

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> most discussions involving cadavers are quite respectful of the fact that they are working on the mortal remains of a person

Not that I know first-hand, but that's not the impression I got from the med students when I was at uni.

People find all sorts of odd ways to cope with their own mortality, and getting reminded of it tends to bring those to the fore.

I participated in a dissection (ex med tech in the Canadian Forces) and the impression that I got is that the room was filled with respect, with everyone being careful to keep the dignity of the cadavers intact at all time.

First-hand, every session that involved cadavers during medical school was very respectful. We were told not to take photos as well. Worst part was the smell of formalin. Humour is fine, assuming the person/cadaver would have been okay with it (and quite a few of the older patients I've met joke about their mortality). But I would rather be respectful and play it safe.

Does very respectful mean no dark humor?

My experience was that boisterous shenanigans, like juggling testicles or something, would absolutely not have been tolerated. Indeed, the mood was somber/business-like enough that no one even dared. On the other hand, a whispered inoffensive remark to your lab partner would be okay. Something this like this would probably be okay:

-- "Be careful not to nick the nerve as you <whatever>"

-- "Opps! Better now?

-- "Yes. In fairness, it's not her biggest problem right now"

Yes — the smell of the formalin!

In 1970-71, my first year at UCLA med school, we spent four (4) hours 4 (four) days a week in the gross anatomy lab.

First semester was below the neck, second semester just the head and neck.

Fascinating; I enjoyed everything about dissecting our (4 students/body) corpse.

The only bad thing was the smell of the formalin: it was SO strong that my eyes would water every session: they/I never got used to it.

My "Grant's Anatomy" textbook, which was propped up on the cadaver tank every session to guide me, still stunk of formalin 40+ years later, so much so that much as I enjoyed having it as a memory of something I did that was really hard, I threw it away around 2010 because it made every closet or cabinet or drawer I put it in reek.

I suspect ventilation in the dissection room (120 students/30 cadavers) 52 years ago was WAY worse than it is today.

I'm surprised I'm not brain dead from inhaling superstrong formalin vapor 16 hours/week x 16 weeks/semester x 2 semesters = for roughly 500 hours that year.

Maybe I am brain dead!

> Worst part was the smell of formalin.

You should eat Serrano ham sandwich afterwards, that just about cures it /s

The formalin smell and hunger are such a weird trip in the lab. Good lunch before was key in my opinion.

My brother, when he attended his anatomy classes, told me the med students were very playful and joked all the time. A coping mechanism, perhaps? I think it's understandable, but respectful they were not.

For example, they called one of the corpses "blondie"... and she was headless. Let that one sink in.

Interesting that the stories about disrespectful behavior are always a friend of a friend and not the medical students themselves. I suspect a majority of these second hand stories of casual disrespect are a combination of a game of telephone and unreliable narrative bluster from young medical students confronting their own mortality for possibly the first time in their lives. Every story from someone with direct experience seems to be respectful.

No. This is first hand experience by my brother during anatomy classes. He was a student and one of the jokers, too. He said this behavior was pretty common, and he took part in it.

Disrespectful/joking behavior behind the scenes is not too rare with doctors, either. I have doctor friends who attest to this, as in, they engage in this behavior (so again, no game of telephone here). Never in front of the patient, since that would be rude and unacceptable, but privately with other physicians? You bet.

You get that this is exactly the scenario I just described, right?

No, how? To you maybe it is (as would ANY anecdote here not directly related by an anatomy student -- and maybe not even then, because what proof do you have that they are telling the truth?), but to me it's not: I spoke with the student directly, and with the doctors in my second example; in both cases, the person I was talking to was directly engaged in the behavior. So not "a friend of a friend".

You are justified in being skeptical, but unfortunately you're not going to find the evidence you seek on HN. By definition, the written word here is not going to be proof enough. If the topic interests you enough, I guess you'll have to speak to doctors and students directly?

I had overheard some dentists joking recently, that was so discussing than even proctologists couldn't say such jokes.

I went to medical school. I saw this firsthand many times. It's neither unexpected nor surprising. You are dissecting dead bodies, in a giant room full of dead bodies and you are there for months.

EDIT: I realize I should clarify based on some of the sibling comments... nobody was doing anything obscene with body parts. I'm referring to commentary, jokes, dark humor.

> nobody was doing anything obscene with body parts

Yes, same with my anecdotes. I was talking about dark humor, not doing anything obscene with body parts. I think nobody else mentioned anything obscene, either.

Respect to the cadaver was teached in our first dissection class and not even once any incident like that happened. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of disrespect coming from veterinary students, which brought me some disgust.

What other inanimate objects (that can’t kill us easily, like an industrial press or firearm) do we talk about “respect” for?

I think this is a special case of emotional transference.

I don’t personally see a reason to treat cadavers any differently than any other object in a lab. They’re not people. Do we need to be careful to show respect for our mobile phones? How about our coffee mugs?

> I don’t personally see a reason to treat cadavers any differently than any other object in a lab

Even from a purely consequentialist point of view: if behavior around the cadavers gets out to the public, and the public deems it disrespectful, the public stops donating cadavers, which negatively impacts medical education. Even if you don't personally believe in treating human remains with respect, a huge part of society does, and you have to at least respect that.

Others demanding a "respectful" treatment, usually mean, that handling, diposal and research on remains, should be treated by a seperate group of persons. One which they usually shun socially, should they ever talk about or discuss there work or parts of it. So the respectful treatment, is actually code for "I do not want to talk about that, or engage with that, unless i must."

Meanwhile, pathology is such a interesting science. Especially the quite visual signs of self inflicted decay due to substance abuse or bad living conditions are very hands on. Also the realization, that the body is a self deprecating machine, adapting to all circumstances.

Great german book on famous dead people and the source of there demise: https://www.amazon.de/Woran-sie-wirklich-starben-Pers%C3%B6n...

Speaking from first-hand, I can't remember any disrespectful behavior. Acting disrespectful toward the donor (what we called the cadavers) would get you kicked out of anatomy lab. There is even a "gift of body" ceremony commemorating the donations every year that family members can attend. Med students will speak about how the donors impacted their medical education and how much they appreciate them.

I would hope that tales of inappropriate jokes of posing with body parts are relegated to a bygone era.

Fwiw I would have no issue donating my body to my institution for dissection. I certainly benefited from the donation. Some notable memories:

- The brittleness and crunchiness of an atherosclerotic artery compared to the pliable rubber hose of a healthy artery

- How incredibly soft lungs are -- like a tempur-pedic pillow. Unless the donor had been a smoker. Then the lungs were hard and black-spotted like a pumice stone.

- The muscular atrophy of old age. There were some donors whose abdominal muscles were as thin as paper.

- Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than one would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't believe we are holding everything that made this person a person, all their personality, everything."

> Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than one would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't believe we are holding everything that made this person a person, all their personality, everything."

Thought provoking. I'll keep this in mind while holding a hundred billion apples during lunch. ;)

From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and face are part of what makes a human, as are the hands. And there's also something in the brain that has been lost, something beyond mere physical matter. An easy example of this is a puzzle, if you're putting a puzzle together, and I come in and mix it up, I've taken something from you, and yet I took no material object away. There's probably some organization that's part of our brain and "humanity" that is lost at death. I'm not talking about religious "spirit" here - back to the puzzle, it has no spirit, but an assembled puzzle is more than the physical material it is made of.

I don't mean to be super critical of your lab partner, just sharing some additional philosophical views.

> From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and face are part of what makes a human, as are the hands.

I also agree with this take, though in the moment at the lab I didn't interject with a critique of mind-body dualism. Either way, it seems the brain has some sort of primacy over other organs, in terms of contributing to personhood. Pretty much everything else could be lost or transplanted, yet we'd still consider someone the same person. The brain however seems essential in making you you.

A large amount of computation takes place in the gut, largely by the foreign bacteria that make up our gut flora, and the gut has direct lines of two-way communication with the brain. Hence the term "gut feeling".

The brain certainly does a lot of heavy lifting, but I think if you took a person's brain out of their human body and into a robot body instead, they'd probably have dramatic shifts in personality, behavior, thought processes, feelings, worldview, etc. It would probably be on a similar level as those experiments where people use magnetic or electric pulses on their brain or whatever and observe large personality changes.

The comment you're replying to is talking about discussion of the experience (hopefully after the fact). I don't think that they're claiming the bodies are being disrespectfully handled. I'm assuming they're talking about the black humor people use to cope with being surrounded by illness and death.

Mom's a nurse, so it never struck me as odd or mean-spirited. It finally dawned on me when she cracked a joke in response to a question grandma asked about a work story mom was telling at a family get-together. It went over grandma's head, thankfully. It was a pretty good pun, but I think that was the first time I realized that not everyone is used to that sort of talk.

Also speaking from first hand I remember quite a bit of "disrespect". Jokes were outright common. The vast majority of interactions were respectful of course -- its hard work studying anatomy after all. But TBH many folks in medicine can be quite callous, which I find not unrelated to the task at hand (i.e. dealing with the crazy and brutal facts of us all being mushy living creatures at a much higher rate than most people). Standing in a room full of dead bodies being dissected... isn't really normal. And it takes a toll.

> TBH many folks in medicine can be quite callous

Pretty much. Med school seems to have this sinister ability to destroy part of your humanity.

If you want to listen to the dark/shady side of the body broker business check out this swindled podcast. These dudes were chopping up bodies and storing parts in buckets, warm coolers, you name it.

It’s quite a listen!

https://swindledpodcast.com/podcast/84-the-body-broker/

Many medical students have their cadaver stories that have similar intrusive thoughts.

Some of those thoughts were shared out loud and definitely come off as ignorant due to the curiosity of the writer.

There's a book I read recently "When Breath Becomes Air" that talks about this rite of passage and the "respect" for mortality that isn't always shared by first year med students.

Many universities, at least in Europe, allow you to sign up to individual modules/exams. This is usually used by people who want to get ahead and study stuff before they actually sign up to a degree, but anyone can do it. At that point, the author would have been a student of that class like any other.

In what way is the OP's interest in dissecting cadavers not "legitimate"?

They don't seem to be doing this to pursue anything other than personal curiosity. And fairly light-hearted curiosity at that -- the tone of the article, to me, sounds more like, "Ooh, nerves are neat!" than someone trying to build a body of knowledge for a larger purpose.

I'm not going to go so far to say that only med students should have access to cadavers... but this article does feel like a rando just cutting someone up for fun, and that feels a bit off to me.

When you say it now I see what you mean, but when first reading the article I read of it more as awe and the act of understanding humanity on a deeper level - a physical level of course, but also transcendent somehow. I don't know if that makes sense... When I look back at it having read your comment, I also doubt my initial more generous view of the situation.

The person being cut up is not hurt, they gave their consent to be cut up. So why should third parties intervene? Of course if there is a shortage of dead bodies, medical students should be prioritized, but why not also open it to everyone. In fact, it is better IMO to have this regulated by universities as those will help with maximizing the learning, and ensure it happens in a respecting environment.

It's funny how differently people can read things, and how different contexts color our impressions.

On most topics, this community mostly values pursuing personal curiosity even if it's not for a larger purpose. We never know where we will find larger purposes, after all! And following interest and desire is generally a valued habit.

I didn't get the impression they were a rando "cutting someone up for fun" (note "someone"). I did get the impression they were a rando who wanted to know more about the human body, with a particular interest in the nervous system likely from a career in AI/ML. Note how the author has a better appreciation for the effects of disease, for the effects of exercise, and how they had intuitional leaps around brain structure and its applicability to ML as well as nascent intuition around the importance of social systems to evolution.

Personally I'm really glad that these opportunities exist. Most bodies become ash or sit rotting unnaturally slowly. This is a better use, even for lay people with idle curiosity.

I had the same impression from the article, and I'm glad you brought up the value of pursuing personal curiosity.

This brings up a central question about the value of collective vs individual knowledge. If you donated your body, would you rather help a lot of people a little or a few people a lot?

If I knew that my body had the power to bring about a truly humbling, enriching, and perspective changing experience to a few individuals, I would be happy with that. In an indirect way, it might be so inspiring for those individuals as to result in a net gain of collective knowledge in the future.

"I’ve even taken a date there, and she enjoyed it!"

So is the illegitimate part the fact that they brought a date, or the fact that she enjoyed it?

If you brought a date to a makerspace, would that make your interest in the makerspace illegitimate? Only if she enjoys it?

Yeah, it's stuff like this that makes me not want to donate my body to science.

Well don't donate your body to France [1]. Some witness even alleged the medical team played football with people heads.

[1] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/french-academic-charged-over-mas...

Yikes! I hope that was a corner, nee coroner, case, but it would not surprise me. My mother was a student nurse in the 40's. In the U.S. for context. She told me of corpses floating in a big tub, or vat, at uni, and that they had to take them out and dissect them for class. She didn't mention any peculiar schenanigans as you describe and I am glad she did not.

shenanigans (no "c").

Good catch. Thank you.

My sister (a doctor) told us of a few rather unsavory incidents that happened with body parts during her time at medical school.

Its pretty common tbh.

I totally understand how you feel, but I think I disagree. After I'm dead, my body is of no use to me. I'm gone. Like Elvis, I will have "left the building". I'm not an ancient Egyptian and so I neither believe in the afterlife nor in my body being of use to me there. And bodies are definitely a boon to science and medicine; they help the living! What can be more uplifting than that?

However, if the body of a loved one who has passed away were to be treated without respect, it would upset me a lot.

I'm on the list to donate my body. Perhaps a medical student will gain just a little more insight or skill by practicing a technique on my body, and perhaps that will help them save or help a patient or two in the future. I hope so.

The thornier issue, having discussed my wishes with my family, is how it will affect them after I go.

Or maybe you’ll be blown up by the us military :)

So interesting, because I had the opposite response. Sure if I donate my body to "science" and it's critical in some sort of medical discovery that would be great, but reading the OP and seeing the author's fascination, learning, and engagement with the cadaver I thought, "Gosh, what a gift!"

I'd certainly be very happy knowing that my body brought such an experience to another individual, I certainly won't be using my body anymore at that point.

I wonder if, when signing up for donation, you can specify what kinds of "science" or interactions you prefer your body to be used for after dying.

Exactly. I always understood you could allow your remains to be used for organ donation or for science. Not for some entertainment before Friday drinks. May be no worse than the way some med students treat donated bodies, but that doesn't make it any better.

Interesting. I did not take the author’s tone in a disrespectful way. It wasn’t solemn, but it wasn’t flippant. It appeared they had a genuine desire to learn about the body. That seems just as noble as a med student who isn’t really interested in medicine beyond a job that makes money and their parents happy.

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