Chandrakant Lahariya and Abhishek Garg | A ‘Cadaver’ Isn’t A Specimen; It’s The First Teacher In Medical Colleges

The recent controversy over a medical student’s “cadaver” remarks had provoked outrage. A video went viral, apologies followed, an institution ordered an inquiry, and social media did what it often does: converted discomfort into judgment. Yet the incident should not be remembered as one young person’s lapse in language or maturity. It must be treated as a mirror held up to medical education itself.

The question is not whether a cadaver deserves respect. That answer is obvious. The deeper question is why any student could pass through the early years of medical training without absorbing what a cadaver represents. If the first encounter with a donated body becomes only a technical exercise, if the anatomy hall becomes merely a place to identify nerves, vessels and muscles for marks, something fundamental has already been lost.

For generations, dissection halls have marked the beginning of medical education. The earliest doctors were often anatomists who tried to understand the human body. Even today, before a future doctor touches a living patient, listens to a heartbeat, inserts a needle, or counsels a frightened family member, he or she learns from someone who can no longer speak. The cadaver is not a specimen. It is a human being who, through body donation, continues to serve society after death. It is every doctor’s first teacher.

This is why the issue goes beyond hurt sentiments. Body donation is built on trust. Families donate the body of a loved one because they believe medical science will treat it with dignity.

Donors pledge their bodies because they believe that, even after death, they can help train doctors, advance research and future patients. If society feels donated bodies may be treated casually, joked about, discussed without reverence, or turned into entertainment, that trust will erode. The consequences will affect anatomy education, surgical training, research and patient care.

Modern medicine depends on trust. Patients trust doctors with pain, fear, secrets and vulnerability. Families trust hospitals with dying relatives. Body donors trust institutions with mortal remains. Medical education is not merely a transfer of knowledge. It is an initiation into responsibility.

The last decade has seen rapid expansion of medical seats and colleges. Competitive examinations have become more intense, coaching industries have grown, and students enter medical colleges after years of being trained to memorise, compete and outperform. The tragedy is that the same system expects empathy to appear automatically once admission is secured. But empathy is not decorative. It has to be cultivated, modelled, practised and assessed.

A medical student learns not only from lectures, textbooks and examinations, but also from institutional culture. If the senior students and teachers treat cadavers as teaching material without acknowledging the donor, students absorb that. If ward rounds reduce patients to “the liver case” or “the fracture”, students learn distance before care. If colleges celebrate marks more than manners, rank more than reflection, and speed more than sensitivity, the outcome should not surprise us.

There have been attempts to address this gap. The introduction of AETCOM -- Attitude, Ethics and Communication in medical education -- in 2019 was meant to remind future doctors that medicine is not only about diagnosis and treatment, but also about conduct, communication and values. The intention was important. But in many colleges, such modules risk becoming ritualistic: lectures, attendance sheets, role-play exercises, perhaps a question in examinations. Values cannot be imbibed through PowerPoint slides alone. They require lived practice.

Anatomy begins with science, but it must also begin with humility. Medical colleges should treat the first anatomy session as a moral moment. Faculty members must model respect in language and conduct. There should be clear protocols on discussion of cadavers, confidentiality and public behaviour. Students should know that professionalism does not end when they leave campus or enter a comedy club, party or social media platform. The white coat is not worn all the time, but the responsibility of being a doctor-in-training does not disappear.

At the same time, public anger must not become a hunt for one individual. A young student can err in judgment. She can apologise, learn and grow. The purpose of ethics is not to destroy people for lapses, but to build professionals and institutions. If we make this incident only about one person, we will miss its larger lesson.

The real failure is systemic. We have built a medical education pipeline that selects for performance under pressure, rewards memory, tolerates hierarchy, and leaves empathy to chance. We have added ethics to the timetable but not always to institutions. We speak of producing more doctors for India, but not enough about what kind of doctors India needs.

India’s medical education system has expanded rapidly, with more colleges and larger undergraduate intakes. Yet this growth has not always been matched by adequate faculty, clinical exposure or teaching facilities. In such settings, the humane side of medicine is easily neglected. Students often learn in a self-directed, examination-driven and increasingly mechanistic way, focusing more on the next test than on empathy, emotional intelligence and respect for patients. This incident is a reminder that medical education must go beyond scientific knowledge and clinical skills. It must also cultivate compassion, sensitivity and professionalism, and restore the human touch to medical teaching and practice. .

A cadaver is not the first object in medical education. It is the first teacher. How students see that silent teacher may determine how they later see the living patient. That is why this controversy should not end with an apology or inquiry report. It should begin a reform of medical education, one that restores gratitude, humility and humanity to becoming a doctor.

Dr Chandrakant Lahariya is a practicing physician in preventive and cardiometabolic medicine and health policy specialist. Dr Abhishek Garg is a doctor and public health professional.