Body donation, controversial but still useful to medicine
DECRYPTION – Taboo for a long time, and even more so since the scandal at Paris-Descartes University, the cadaveric model retains an important role in the training of doctors and for research. A decree has just modified the legal framework.
The gift of the body“to science” is not anymore. It is henceforth “donation of the body for medical teaching and research purposes”renamed by decree 2022-719 of the bioethics law, published in Official newspaper on April 28. An appellation which specifies a little better the future of the 2500 to 3000 bodies bequeathed each year in France to faculties of medicine.
“It is often the morbid side of the donation of the body that is put forward, but we communicate little about its usefulness”, notes Nicolas Naïditch, a sociologist who has conducted research on the profile of donors. However, whatever the progress of simulation devices, the gift of the body remains very useful. However, “he does not have a good image in our societyunderlines the researcher. Unlike organ donation, it is not the subject of communication campaigns. And if we emphasize that organ donation saves lives, we do not explain that the donation of the body also has a benefit, but collective and in the longer term.
Read also70 complaints against the “Paris-Descartes mass grave”
“To give…
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