Dead body found in Meyer Health and Science Building
Students explore human body, dissect cadaver through NIC's Human Cadaver Dissection class, chance to observe human body first hand
Ryan Di Ricco
Issue date: 11/24/08 Section: Life
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The cadaver is a 95-year-old woman who donated her body to science before her expected death. NIC got her from Washington State University, where they have a well-known body donation program. Out of respect and for privacy reasons there is no other known information about her.
This is NIC's third year studying cadavers. At the moment they have two, a male who is already prosected (pre dissected). He is used as a model for the cadaver dissector students with their dissection work and as a teaching tool for the students of the Human Anatomy and Physiology classes, which are taught by Cheri and Peter Zao. The other is being dissected by skilled students who have shown their appreciation, interest and talent in the Human Cadaver Dissection class.
The class is set up so that the members split up into pairs. Each pair selects a day in the week they will be dissecting; but first there's a lot of preparation. There is reading material in the guidebook, an online lecture given by the teacher, an atlas of the body to study and a quiz.
The first pair to dissect has to precisely cut through the skin and peel it back. After the first pair has gotten as far as they can for the day, the next pair gets as far as they can the next day. Cutting through the fat, or what they call superficial fascia, finding nerves, arteries, veins, and sorting through muscle tissue. Though they are spilt up into pairs the whole class works as a team.
"Dissecting a human is much more respectful, more complex, it takes it to another level, a more advanced level," said Kyle Knapp, pre-nursing major.
"This has taught me so much more than cat dissections ever have," said his partner Emily Fowler, pre-radiology tech major.
Knapp and Fowler are one of the first pairs to dissect in the week, giving them the job of cutting through the skin and fat. One might cringe at the thought of that, but for them, it's something exciting.
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