INTESTINES HELD IN HANDS

And I held them in my hands….

Intestines of a person ,

Intestines of a person who was once alive…..

It was disgusting but at the same time shocking……..

Not shocking because I was seeing the body open for the first time because I was not…..

 It was shocking because I couldn’t recall his face, the body# 1’s face.

I tried to recall his face, which was no longer there. The face which had been dissected out by the students studying the  head and neck region.

Nothing…………………..

And then I just stood there, holding his intestines, that I had literally ripped off from his interior. Realizing the fact that I didn't even care to say prayer for his forgiveness before I began ripping off his organs.I didn't even take a minute to say litany for him. I did see that person’s face when the body#1 arrived, I’m sure I did. But I was too impassive to feel for him.

 I did bewail over his fate. 

Getting scared , I also selfishly prayed for a better fate for myself. But nothing for him..............

Is this part of medical life.......... Turning into a stone hearten? 

 

How often do we care about the bodies lying in dissection hall? How often do we think about how they died and ended up in the dissection hall? What about their families? Are they still searching for these persons? Those who were once loved?

A dead person’s body has an intrinsic ethical value that requires a respectful attitude towards it.

The ethical dilemma appears when the legal norms or the medical educational or the need for scientific research require an invasive manipulation of the cadaver. The procedures of autopsy and dissection damage to the integrity of the dead person’s body and, as we do accept that we owe respect to the human cadaver (since it represents a post mortem projection of the person alive), an apparently irreconcilable conflict appears between the need of these procedures, on one hand, and the right to personal physical integrity, on the other hand.

Why is it important, from a moral point of view, to respect the human cadaver? Does the human body, even without life, have an intrinsic value? The answer is, of course, affirmative.

Firstly, it has been stated that the person is intimately identified with his/her body, to the point that they are practically inseparable. The human body maintains, even in death, a recognizable form that inspires respect for the person’s identity. Indirectly, the way we treat the human cadaver influences the way we treat the person alive; to treat the dead body as a simple carcass, as a waste product, would mean implicitly to lower the evaluation standards applied to the person alive.

A second argument takes into account our desire to respect the memory of the deceased. The cadaver is the material carrier of an amount of events regarding the deceased person that persist in our memory. Disrespecting the cadaver would mean in a way to disregard the deceased person him/herself. On the other hand, the need of decent treatment applied to the cadaver has its roots in the moral-ethical imperative to respect the family’s mourning - a family that has suffered a painful and irreversible loss.

Thus cadavers are not masses of dead meat for cutting, tearing and ripping the organs off, they must be respected by heart and the least we can do is pray for their forgiveness and not make fun of their bodies being exposed to us.

Think with empathy:

Who would even imagine a fate alike??