Students Watch Autopsy of Teen From School
I’m not really crazy about sending my kid out to watch an autopsy to begin with. Yes, even in the name of science. But when the body a class of teens is watching the medical examiner cut up belongs to a fourteen-year-old from their school district, you’ve lost me completely.
It’s exactly what happened at a Michigan ME’s office; even after the teacher was warned that the teenagers in her high school science class would be subjected to the autopsy of a middle school student from the same school district who had committed suicide.
The Detroit News reported the teacher put it out to her students, kids in the eleventh and twelfth grades at Waterford Kettering High School. None of the kids actually knew the girl, although one student knew the deceased’s brother. The ME’s office in Oakland County has decided to stop all future high school tours because of the case, but I’d say all the adults involved here need to be reviewing their actions. Kids watching dead kids be examined? It’s the stuff that can cause some pretty severe nightmares, not to mention a host of issues for the child’s family.
That older teens might be sent to see an autopsy as part of their exploration of potential careers is one thing. Personally I think that kind of thing should be limited to kids who have expressed an interest in the medical field, not required viewing for a regular upper-level science class. If kids feel they’re going to be upset by watching a body carved up, by all means, let them stay back in the school building and do busy work.
And the kids who choose to make the trip? They should not be watching the process being done on another child, especially one who they might know in one way, shape or form. Adults have a hard enough time stomaching the thoughts of harm having come to a child. Professionals who deal with this type of thing on a daily basis, despite all their attempts to become immune to the horrors specific to the loss of a child, still struggle. Ask any district attorney who has had to prosecute the case of a child’s death if he doesn’t go home at night and hug his kids just that much tighter. To expect teenagers, still kids themselves, to process that sort of thing – or to think that asking them beforehand if they’re OK with it and expecting their teenaged-bravado not to get in the way – is a failure to protect a piece of their innocence.
Yes, they can see this sort of thing on CSI. But a fake body on a screen has nothing on a real body laid out in front of them, the body of a child they know has walked through the same halls where they once studied math and science.
Let’s let kids be kids – as long as we can.
Image: The Detroit News
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OH HELL NO!!!!! There is someting very wrong with the teacher that thought this one up! If the children were interested in a career in medicine, then o.k. But the WHOLE SCIENCE CLASS??? So not cool! Let kids stay kids. They pretty much have no “innocence” now with the crap they see on t.v.! I say let’s try to preserve their innocence now before they grow up thinking that they could be a “backyard coroner”!!!
We used to have this program at my high school for students interested in medicine. It was a specific anatomy and physiology class you had to enroll in and possibly the most challenging class in the school. They canceled trips to the morgue after high schoolers were visiting and suddenly coroners rolled in a dead two year old. There’s a difference between watching an older adult’s autopsy compared to witnessing the autopsy of a dead child. In this particular case students probably felt waaay more vulnerable witnessing the autopsy of someone their age. I can see why it would be traumatizing.
I am with cn.
The fact that the death was a suicide makes it a little…off-putting (I can’t think of the right word). Before I read the whole story, I figured the kids would be viewing an autopsy of another teen who died in a drunk driving accident.
I really have no problem with this.
Do they also have plans to visit local cemetaries to mourn for family members.
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I’m with cn. I don’t think shielding older kids from death and how our society operates is doing them a favor. When you think about it, it is kind of odd how little exposure we have to dead bodies, considering that we’re all gonna be one someday.
I also don’t find it objectionable. A little kid, yes that would probably be inappropriate, but not a teenager. A body is a body and I can’t imagine it affecting them more than an adult. Suicides usually aren’t announced in school because of kids glamorizing it, seeing the true consequence might have been good for some.
I don’t really see the horror in this. I’m guessing the kids knew where they were going. Who was on the table is kinda of secondary to what is on the table to begin with.
Why shield kids from death – even death within their peer group? Perhaps knowing that suicide is not, in fact, painless and that a real death results can help teens who might be flirting with the idea. Or I can see an even stronger argument for seeing the autopsy of a teen who died in a car crash as a result of DUI or speeding or whatever.
Presented correctly with the appropriate context, I don’t find this objectionable in the slightest.
“Wildly inappropriate” doesn’t even begin to describe this.
I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but this story is horrible. At least to me. This is coming from a guy who watched Mondo Cane and all of the Faces of Death while still in grade school. Television is one thing but up close and personal is an experience that can’t quite be explained. You think funerals are bad? They look like wax dummies compared to the real thing staring up at you. Now I’ve seen my fair share of dead bodies and between the ages of 15 and 18 I lost 7 friends. I understand the science of the situation and what it was meant for, but this was just a plain bad call in my opinion. I even believe in scaring kids of this age because they all believe that they’re invincible, but yeah, um, this was seriously messed up.
That’s just wrong.
I interned at the coroner’s office as a junior and senior in high school. I did the external exams under the supervision of a morgue tech on a regular basis, and helped the medical examiner with the internal exams. I remember one case vividly. She was a toddler who had accidentally drowned in a bucket of Pine-Sol. Her mother wasn’t much older than me. The toddler dropped her earring in the bucket, and tipped into the bucket trying to get it out. I couldn’t stand the smell of Pine-Sol for years after that autopsy. I even wanted to work in the field, and it scarred me.