Indiana proposes sharing surplus cadavers

An increase in human bodies donated to science in recent years has caused the Indiana Anatomical Education Board to ask that an amendment be added to Senate Bill 218. The amendment would allow Indiana to share the surplus of cadavers with other states.

“The simple fact is apparently we don’t need as many as we have,” said Gordon Coppoc, assistant dean and director of the IU School of Medicine–Lafayette.

The Indiana Anatomical Education Board, run by the IU School of Medicine, distributes cadavers to all institutions of higher learning in Indiana, said David Burr, chairman of the Anatomical Education Board. Right now, he said, the board is restricted to only distributing the cadavers to institutions in Indiana.

“There are other states, like New York, who routinely have shortages,” Burr said. “We want to be able to help them out.”

The increase in donations might have occurred for two reasons, Burr said. The primary reason is the change in the board’s program allowing people to donate directly instead of going through a local funeral director. Funeral directors could previously charge families of the deceased, he said.

“Now people can donate with no expenses to them or their families,” he said.
When the economy goes bad, donations go up, Burr said. People who do not have money to pay for a funeral choose to donate their bodies to science instead.

Cadavers are used in medical education courses statewide, said Jim Walker, a professor of anatomy in Purdue’s Basic Medical Sciences program. At Purdue, cadavers are used in undergraduate programs and summer programs for high school students as well, he said.

After the cadavers have been used in the classroom, they are returned to Indianapolis, where they are cremated individually, Burr said. They are placed in an urn and returned to their families or buried in a communal plot at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, he said.

Schools that have a shortage of cadavers are forced to seek them from other states or turn to other teaching methods, Burr said. One method is prosection, where a cadaver is dissected prior to instructional use and shown to a class.

“We have the feeling here in Indiana that it is really important for students to have experience with actual human bodies,” Burr said. “None of the other methods can replace the experience students have with a cadaver.”

Students learn skills by working on a cadaver that they cannot learn through computer demonstrations, Burr said. Students have to work together in groups over the cadaver.

They also tend to treat the cadaver as their first patient, he said.

“It instills values we’d like them to have when they become doctors,” Burr said.

Walker said there is no comparison between dissecting a cadaver and learning from a computer. The amount of time it takes to dissect is time spent better understanding the cadaver and all of its parts, he said.

“The last thing I’d want to do is go to a doctor who learned from a computer screen,” Walker said.