Students work with cadavers to learn about the body

• Megan Ransom / Scroll Staff
• posted: 20 Mar 2007
• scrollcampus@byui.edu

Four metallic boxes lay on four separate tables lining an unusual classroom. Beneath the lids of these boxes lie bodies whose spirits no longer reside therein.

The classroom is the cadaver lab in the Ezra Taft Benson Building. A cadaver is a dead body; especially: one intended for dissection, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

BYU‑Idaho students in the Biology Department use the cadavers to learn about the human body in advanced classes.

These classes include human anatomy and physiology, neurobiology, gross anatomy, advanced regional anatomy and a new course that will focus on head and neck anatomy.

Traditionally, education has been dominated by books and lectures, but often it’s not enough to fully understand a subject.

The three-dimensional intricacies of the human body cannot be fully duplicated in books, on slides, by computers or through the use of plastic models. The only medium for thorough study and research of the human being is the body itself, according to the University of Utah Body donor’s Web site, www.neuro.utah.edu/bodydonor.

Many students on campus have opportunities to get hands-on experience with their subjects. Chemistry students work with chemicals and auto mechanics work on cars.

However, most majors at this university do not require its students to work with dead bodies.

Many people are not comfortable with dissection. It’s common in introductory biology labs to dissect things such as frogs and grasshoppers. When dissections of cadavers or the cadaver lab come up in conversation with Svend Bjorn, a senior from Woodenville, Wash., most people’s reactions are Ewww!

I actually enjoy it. It gives us more of a hands-on experience to have them around. If you think of it as science, it’s not that difficult to handle, Bjorn said.

There have been few instances where a student will faint upon first acquaintance with the cadavers, said Sydney Palmer a professor in the Biology Department.

Palmer has been teaching with cadavers for 17 years.

It seems pretty natural at this point, Palmer said If a student wants to know about how the body works, there’s just no better way to learn it than [through] courses like this. I feel like anatomy is the orange book to the human body.

It’s rumored that some universities treat the bodies poorly. Bjorn said that his first experience with cadavers was not at this university and that the bodies were not respected.

The BYU‑I Biology Department has rules in order to respect those that are deceased and have donated their bodies.

There is absolutely no naming or nicknaming cadavers. We demand absolute respect of cadavers. If you think about it, it really is a significant gift, Palmer said.

The Biology Department obtains the bodies through the University of Utah Body Donor program.

The cadaver lab usually contains four bodies, which are replaced about every two years. The bodies are stored in a room that is specially built to move air in a specific direction in order to help preserve them, Palmer said.

The bodies are given back to the University of Utah after careful dissection.