In Oak Ridge, Tenn., high school seniors are getting to put their hands all over other human bodies. Not only are they permitted to do this, it is a requirement.
But the bodies they are touching aren't their own or those of their classmates, which is what teenagers have done since the dawn of time. No, these bodies are preserved in a lab at a nearby community college. And they are most decidedly dead.
Dr. Harry "Whitey" Hitchcock's physiology class at Clinton High School culminates with an opportunity for his students, who are mostly bound for medical school, to translate illustration in a book to structures in situ. Other high schools across the country also offer similar learning demos to motivated students. Some even hold fund raisers to pay for their cadavers.
Parents, for the most part, are OK with this option, even in conservative enclaves like Eastern Tennessee. Some even stop by the lab to watch, according to Emily Voigt's story in the New York Times:
“I’d never seen anything like this before, but I thought if my son
can handle it, I can,” Mark Fuhrman said in an interview later. “I
start looking at the cadaver closer. It’s got hair. I think: ‘This is
not a chunk of meat. This is a person, or what’s left of a person.’ ”
So what do you think? Would you be willing to sell candy bars for a cadaver fund? Would you sign the permission slip for your kids to sink his hands into a body?
