Donor Dissection Through a Christian Lens

Students at Oklahoma Christian University have the chance to take a cadaveric human anatomy course. This course gives undergraduates the opportunity to complete detailed dissections and observe human anatomy through a Christian lens.

Human Anatomy with Cadaver Dissection course is taught by Associate Professor of Biology, Dr. Sara Alcon. The course is designed to challenge students and prepare them for medical school. Students engage in both classroom learning and laboratory work five days a week. The course is a five credit hour class, which comes with a heavy workload and long work hours. Landon Casaday, a senior biology pre-med student, explains the weekly outline of the course.

“The course runs every day of the week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday are lectures from 8 to 8:50am. She [Dr. Alcon] runs through slides and lectures and gives a lot of good analogies. She’ll answer pretty much any question. She’s almost like an encyclopedia,” Casaday said. “We have labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is more than any other lab you will take other than microbiology. But even then, the lab is longer in cadaver. Labs are from 8 a.m. until 10:50 a.m. In dissection, you are tasked with daily lab goals. You and your team will get together and dissect to find certain structures.”

This semester, the class has the privilege of dissecting two people who donated their bodies. With 10 students in the class, one team of five students is assigned to each donor, making teamwork a major part of the class. Peter Damico, senior bio pre-med student, draws on his experience working with his team.

“I really enjoyed my team. I think we have all done a really great job of keeping things light and fun, even though what we’re doing is pretty serious, we have all done a great job of helping each other out. My group has been dissecting the female donor, and the other group is dissecting the male donor,” Damico said. “We will kind of teach each other about the donor we have. When you do the dissection, you know it better than if you don’t do the dissection. The whole class really works as a team, even though we’re in separate dissection groups. We learn a lot of teamwork skills in the science department, and this is kind of just taking it to the next level.”

Alongside the technical skills of dissection, the curriculum places a strong emphasis on bedside manner and ethical responsibility. While instructing the class, Dr. Alcon illustrates what ensuring the dignity and humanity of each donor looks like.

“We have a lot of discussions about the ethics and the privilege involved in somebody having donated their body for us to be able to do this. We refer to them as donors, rather than referring to them as cadavers, because to refer to somebody as a cadaver makes them into a thing, and they are not a thing. They were a person, and we want to respect their dignity by trying to use language that reminds us of their personhood. They are like the student’s first patient,” Alcon said.

Throughout her time teaching the class for 11 years, Dr. Alcon has seen not only the academic side of the course, but also the emotional and spiritual side from the perspective of her students. 

“Dissecting a human is a different experience. Not everybody is going to have the same emotions. Not everybody is going to react in the same way as they dissect a human being. I don’t have any expectations for how people react, but we do have a lot of discussions about the ethics involved and the privilege involved in somebody having donated their body to us to be able to do this,” Alcon said.

Throughout the course, the theme of God’s creation is consistently integrated into the curriculum“A lot of people are seeing science prove the existence of God the creator, I can see that in the cadaver course. It is so in depth and in detail, and to the extent that we go, is not even as in depth or in detail as you can possibly get,” Casaday said. “Working with my cadaver class—in dissection, being able to feel things with my own two hands, and seeing it with my own eyes, rather than just learning it through lecture—allows me to see that there is so much intricacy. And knowing that it all has to come together to make one thing happen; and knowing that can’t be done without a higher power.”

Damico’s takeaway from the course is no different; his view from the lab falls in line with Dr. Alcon’s Christian teaching.

“It is so amazing how connected everything is, and just how complex the human body is. I’ve always thought this throughout my time taking science classes at Oklahoma Christian, but just in awe of creation and how there is no way any of this happened by accident. I mean, the human body is the most complex thing on the planet, Damico said.”

Dr. Alcon shares her favorite verse that reminds her of the intricacy of how the human body is created.

“It all points to the beauty of God. He cares about all these individual things and that somehow it all just works,” Alcon said. “It is one of my favorite verses, Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, and His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”