Disappearing Bodies

Now, nearly a millennium after its measured introduction, cadaver dissection may have begun an equally slow exit. This year a few US medical schools will offer their anatomy curriculum without any cadavers. Instead their students will probe the human body using three-dimensional renderings in virtual reality, combined with physical replicas of the organs and real patient medical images such as ultrasound and CT scans. The program developers hope technology can improve on some of the limitations of traditional approaches. It takes a long time to dissect cadavers, and some body parts are so inaccessible that they may be destroyed in the process. Plus, the textures and colors of an embalmed cadaver's organs do not match those of a living body, and donated bodies tend to be old and diseased.