Moral Considerations in Medical Education: Buying Unclaimed Human Cadavers

Abstract

Is it morally virtuous for a medical school to buy and to use unclaimed cadavers? Because of his exalted status as the creature who is the imago Dei, the human person has an inviolable dignity that is his simply because he is the kind of being that he is. This is why we cannot buy and sell people. However, since you cannot distinguish the human person from his body without doing violence to his identity as an embodied creature, the same argument can also be made against the buying and selling of human bodies. I therefore conclude that it is immoral for unclaimed bodies to be used in medical schools, and even more morally problematic for them to be sold and to be bought. Instead, Catholic citizens should exercise the corporal act of mercy by providing for the burial of the bodies of these brothers and sisters of ours. And in response to the lack of cadavers, they should also organize programs to increase the bequeathing of bodies for medical education and research.