Speaking for the dead: an anatomists ethical reflections on
the dead human body was the topic of a public lecture on October 12 at UKZN by Professor Gareth Jones, Director of the Bioethics Centre and Professor of Anatomy and Structural Biology at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Professor Jones said, “Anatomists need ethics, however this has not always been so. After all, if anatomists fail to address ethical issues of direct relevance to the study of the dead human body, who is expected to do this? And yet anatomists have repeatedly fallen down when it has come to asserting the primacy of ethical standards in their profession. They have paid far too little attention to ethical strictures, and this has opened the way to some appalling ethical lapses in anatomical practice.
“As I have reflected on these issues, it has seemed that the manner in which we respond to the dead, the use we make of their skeletal remains and tissues, and the ways in which we learn about ourselves by studying them, raise ethical queries that go to the heart of what it means to be human, said Professor Jones”.