Awareness and willingness to participate in drug clinical trials among college students: a cross-sectional study in China.

Anatomists deal on a daily basis with the dead, particularly those who provide prosected material for educational purposes or those who require their students to dissect. Moreover, even for those anatomists who do not employ human bodies for educational or research purposes, there is interaction with the dead as there are ethical issues regarding the images they use. This also applies to digitized imagery such as those that employ data from . In a paper by Moxham et al. concerned with anatomical transgressions, it was stated that, apart from historical imagery, nowadays permission should be sought for the use of images from those who are alive and donate their bodies on death for anatomical education and research. This is also the view of the International Federation of Anatomical Associations (IFAA) whose international ethical committee has published on the IFAA's website the recommendation that “limits need to be placed on the extent to which images, or other artefacts produced from donations or unclaimed bodies, are placed in the public domain, including in social media, both to respect the privacy of their donor (and their surviving relatives) and to prevent arousing morbid curiosity. No individual should be identifiable in images”. Indeed, Cornwall et al., and Lottering et al. have highlighted the fact that little attention has been paid to the ethics concerning the use of anatomical imagery. In response, however, a large group of anatomists and editors of anatomical journals published a paper criticizing the IFAA guidelines (criticisms rebutted by Ref. []), including the argument that ostensibly the dead have no rights, as legally the “right to privacy does not extend beyond death”. While acknowledging that there is some disagreement on the issue of whether the dead have rights,, , the reported views of Iwanaga et al. need close examination, and this provides the motivation for the writing of this Viewpoint. Anatomy is known to have had an unscrupulous, unethical past,, , yet considerable strides have been made in recent years to improve the ethical standards for the use of human bodies. Professional organizations, including the IFAA, have produced guidelines on good practice for the sourcing and use of bodies,, , images, public display of plastinated remains, and congress exhibitions. However, questionable practices regarding the use of human remains continue (e.g., the acceptance for anatomy of unclaimed bodies). One wonders whether such practices would be sanctioned by the dead individuals and whether they would feel it was a contravention of their rights. Accounts of the ethical philosophies underpinning the notion of rights are voluminous and often controversial. Following Kantian deontological ethical theories, which claim that absolute notions of what is ethically right and wrong are inherent and inborn, leads to questions as to why there is not universal acceptance of inborn rights and how (or from whom) these rights arose with human evolution. Increasingly, rights are being regarded as privileges that humans bestow on each other. Indeed, the Legal Information Institute holds that “A right is a power or privilege held by the general public, usually as a result of a constitution, statute, regulation, or judicial precedent”. Although controversial, many claim that animals have rights, particularly those that are sentient and feel pain. The philosopher Mary Midgley has written the books
and
and Peter Singer coined the term ‘speciesism’ in his book . Whatever one's views on animal rights, this provides an example of how humans bestow privileges that are labeled as rights. It follows that we would argue that it is required of anatomists, acting for the general good, to accept that the dead should have bestowed on them privileges that we can term rights.