Students see the human side of dissection

Lab is only ASU class where students perform full cadaver dissections

 by Karen Michelle Sarver
 published on Thursday, April 10, 2008

Dr. John Olson's biology students are not likely to chew
wintergreen-flavored gum — and that's not because gum isn't allowed in class.

Olson said oil of wintergreen is used in the preservation of human tissue, which is not very appetizing to those students in Olson's class who dissect cadavers. "If you work in one of these [dissection] labs for a year, you won't chew Doublemint gum anymore," Olson said, half-jokingly.

Cadavers are used in Biology 201 and 202 labs, Olson said. But they are actually dissected in the Biology 494 course named Advanced Study Practicum: Anatomy and Physiology.


"Our Bio 201 and 202 students do not yet have the time nor the expertise to do dissections," Olson said.

Olson said the students in the upper division class are in the lab two and a half hours a week "with their knives, doing their thing."


Serenity Boyles, a molecular biotechnology and biosciences senior, said her Biology 494 class is "really cool."

This semester, Boyles and her lab partners were assigned to dissect a cadaver's arms and legs.

Boyles said the first five minutes of dissection can be disconcerting, but after that, dissection is "fun."

The only part of the process that she said she is squeamish about is cutting through fat.

"Organs are not pristine and clean," Boyles said. "They have to be cleaned of fat deposits. Fat is really gross. It's like the nastiest thing ever."

Olson said the labs were "initiated last summer through the School of Letters and Sciences under the auspices of the biology program."

ASU professor Dr. Cayle Lisenbee and Olson made the arrangements for the class, following consultation with Dr. Andrew Smith with the School of Letters and Sciences, Olson said.

It is the only cadaver lab of its kind offered at any ASU campus.

The Tempe campus does have cadavers, Olson said, "but they do not have the lab space or time to allow a class full of students to do the prosections." Prosection, Olson explained, is dissection performed by an expert either in front of students or beforehand.

"Tempe orders the cadavers with most of the prosection done, then uses the graduate student TAs to do any 'extra' cleaning and work on the bodies," he added. "Downtown has the same number of cadavers as Tempe, but we order them fully intact, with no prosection done to them."

"A thorough prosection takes about 60 hours of work, so I created a class where the students are doing the prosection work under careful supervision instead of paying for it to be done at the U of A," he said. "This gives our students a much higher level of interaction and ability to gain knowledge than the current way of doing it in Tempe."

Mike Barton, a previous Bio 494 student who has graduated, said the class "gives you more of an instructor's view of the body."

"You get a lot better understanding of how the body works," he said.

Shannon Fogg, a nursing junior, said, "It helps to see an actual body instead of just what you would [see] in a text book."

Although a majority of Olson's biology students are nursing students, he said "there are quite a few people of different disciplines."

In Olson's BIO 201/202 syllabus, he cautions pregnant students to make special lab arrangements to avoid exposing the fetus to "some of the chemicals used in the preservation process."

He also suggests students with religious restrictions on cadaver use talk to him about lab adjustments.

Olson noted that he has worked closely with Dine and Hopi advisers at ASU, and that he has "always come to an understanding and a solution with people of many different diverse cultures and backgrounds."

The Willed Body Program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson supplies the cadavers. Cadavers have a lifespan of approximately one year before they must be returned to UA for cremation, Olson said.


Boyles, who is considering becoming a doctor, said dissection "helps from a biological standpoint."

"I really learn a lot about the body firsthand," she said.

She added that if she goes to medical school, she will have the advantage of obtaining experience that is not ordinarily available to undergraduate students. "It's an extremely interesting class, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about human anatomy," she said.

Reach the reporter at: ksarver@asu.edu.