by Joshua Curtis
Daily Lobo
While other students take notes and solve math problems, medical student Matt Garcia dissects cadavers.
It's the best way to learn how to be a doctor, he said.
"It's about reality," he said. "You get a proper relationship and the interaction that you can't get in
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a book."
Cadavers are expensive and in high demand. Medical companies will pay up to $50,000 for the tissue and parts of one body, said Dr. Tom Estenson, the director of the cadaver lab at UNM Hospital.
That money goes toward expenses such as shipping and preparing the cadaver, and none of it goes toward a profit, Estenson said. Because it's illegal to sell human tissue for profit in the U.S., people have to donate
their bodies.
There are about 4,200 people on the donation list for UNM's cadaver program, he said.
The cadaver lab handles those bodies, conducts research and holds classes.
"Donors are for basic education for all the programs here," Estenson said. "You can't understand the human anatomy without
dissecting it."
Estenson said the cadavers are used to demonstrate surgical procedures.
"A lot of it has been fixing screws in the spinal column. When you are fixing devices, you need landmarks to see if they are going in the right way," he said. "We have surgeons walk residents through the process."
A donator who died of lung cancer asked for his body to be used to discourage smoking.
"He is sliced into inches. If you stood him up, he would be 9 feet tall because of the acrylic plastic encasings - it's a wonderful resource," Estenson said.
Aaron Price, a second-year medical student, is grateful for the chance to work with cadavers.
"You come into a profession like this as a layperson, and everything is so surreal," he said. "The cadavers add reality."
A 2004 incident at the University of California-Los Angeles' cadaver program in which the director was accused of selling bodies put pressure on other cadaver programs, Estenson said.
"People on our list called and asked us, 'What are you doing about this? We don't want you selling our bodies for profit,'" he said. "Security has become an issue."
The incident changed people's opinion about donating their bodies, Estenson said.
"We lost about 50 to 100 (donors) when the scandal happened, and we don't know how many people would have signed up,"
he said.
Estenson said New Mexicans are generous, and their donating has kept the program alive.
"The scandal hurt every medical school in the country," he said. "It was front page headlines, and many schools struggled to have donors. We are one of the schools that has enough donors."
Donors come from all income levels and races, he said.
"We get a fair amount of veterans," he said. "I think they have an interest more so than the general public. They have seen physical tragedy, and they are a little more conscious of it."
Medical student Joshua Raiten said the cadaver program is
priceless.
"You can't create anything that creates this experience," he said. "I went to massage school, and we saw a cadaver for one day, and I learned more that day than I did from any textbook."
