[arkades]

I had no especial antipathy to the cadaver lab in med school. A preserved cadaver holds very little relationship to a real body, outside of the relationships of anatomical landmarks. I -wish- we had had been able to study from prosections.

But digital cadavers completely fail to capture the three dimensional relationship of the components of a body. I have probably every atlas on the market, paper and digital, and I still occasionally go to our affiliated school’s lab to interrogate a body when I need a refresher.

There is nothing even vaguely approaching a replacement yet, though I’ve been hearing about how we can replace real dissections with simulations for literally decades. I do wish folks who’ve never had to navigate the internal landscape of a body would stop offering their opinions on how one should learn it.

[ianai]

This does seem counterproductive to me as well. I very much scare away from the idea of learning from cadavers myself. But that makes me all the more appreciative of the people who do. If it weren’t for modern medicine I would be crippled or dead. The benefits heavily outweigh the costs.

[truculation]

>I do wish folks who’ve never had to navigate the internal landscape of a body would stop offering their opinions on how one should learn it.

I'm not recommending we end the use of cadavers -- and this is a discussion site, not a medical school!

[digi_owl]

Would 3D glasses help? Or is the issue how to deal with the mass of the various layers and organs?

[wafflebear]

It would be like learning origami without ever folding a sheet of paper.

[trhway]

How about 3d printed bodies?

[ben_w]

My gut (non expert) feeling is that when 3D printing can be indistinguishable from natural, and quality assurance can make it reliably indistinguishable, we won’t need humans digging around inside us.

How long that takes I would only embarrass myself by guessing.

[tickerticker]

A benefit of cadaver disection is the range of anomalies like the penile implant, or finding hair and teeth in a random abdominal nook. Tough to imagine this benefit in 3D printed versions.