Cadavers honored for dedication to science

  PRIYA SHARMA A medical student lights a candle in honor
of a person who donated their body to the UCLA School of Medicine
through the Willed Body program.

By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Contributor

About two dozen cadavers will receive thank you notes from the
medical students who dissected them.

The messages, which were written Tuesday evening in a ceremony
organized by the School of Medicine’s Class of 2004, will be
cremated alongside the corpses of participants in UCLA’s
Willed Body Program.

In what was called “A Celebration of Remembrance and
Gratitude,” medical students wrote personal messages to and
lit candles for the people who donated their bodies to the school.
Some students became visibly emotional as they spoke before their
peers to say how much they appreciated the gift.voice quiverring,
eyes teary

“You gave us one of your most precisous objects ““
the human body,” said Evon Walks, addressing the donor whose
corpse she dissected. “I can only imagine the selflessness
with which you lived your life.”

All of the students had to go through what can be an ordeal
known as Gross Anatomy during their first year at medical
school.

“It’s kind of like a rite of passage,” said
Sarah Kennedy, a student who helped coordinate the ceremony.

She said it was hard making that initial incision into the
cadaver, but soon she was able to focus on her work.

“Basically, I hadn’t seen anybody dead in my
life,” Kennedy said.

Some students have particular trouble when it comes to
dissecting the hands and head, she added explain why.

Although students have no idea of the background of the person
whose corpse they’re dissecting, they can learn little things
about the individual.

“Some still have nail polish on so that’s like,
whoah!” Kennedy said. “To see that ““ it’s
kind of like a vestige of that person.”

Doctor Carmine Clemente who came to the medical school in 1951
as an instructor, and later headed the Anatomy Department, spoke to
the students and told them how comparatively priviledged they
are.

“The history of human dissection has been fraught with
difficulty,” said Clemente.

What was long a social taboo over the practice caused the Greek
physician Galen to resort to dissecting a Barbary Ape. When Galen
used the examinations to infer things about human anatomy, however,
a few errors arose, Clemente said.

“He described the foot as having an opposable toe, which
is not the case,” he said.

Laws against human dissection were still in place in the United
States and Britain during the early 1800’s, Clemente said. An
underground industry sprung up to meet medical schools’
demands for bodies, with graverobbers known as
“resurrectionists.”

Clemente related the story of William Hare and his wife, who ran
a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland.

After a lodger passed away, the couple discovered that a
professor at the University of Edinburgh medical school would pay 7
pounds, 10 shillings for the corpse ““ more than recouping the
money owed to them by the expired roomer.

With the help of a friend, William Burke, Hare turned the
incident into a regular operation ““ luring aging customers to
the hotel, getting them drunk and suffocating them.

“What was unfortunate was that the professor and his
assistants never asked where the bodies came from,” Clemente
said.

The scheme began to unravel when medical students recognized the
corpse they were about to dissect as that of a local prostitute.
Burke was hanged and Hare given immunity for his testimony.

When UCLA’s medical school opened, anatomical material was
regulated by a state board, and there was never quite enough of it,
Clemente said. The bodies schools in the state received came from
indigent people without relatives.

In 1950, Horace W. Magoun, the first anatomy professor at UCLA,
wrote about the situation in a two-paragraph editorial that
appeared in the Daily Bruin. It was seen by the Los Angeles
Examiner, which wrote further on the subject. Later that year
Magoun was in discusions with the state legislature, Clemente
said.

UCLA was allowed to establish its Willed Body Program, which
“was the leading light throughout the world,” he added.
The ceremony for the cadavers began in 1996.

Kwame Donkor, a student originally from Ghana, said the ceremony
was very meaningful.

As time went on, students became attached to their cadavers.

“It’s like something that’s a part of you
being taken away,” Donkor added.

He was also appreciative of the anonymous donor of the body.

“The reason why they donated their bodies was so we could
become knowledgeable,” Donkor said. “So we took
advantage of that.”