A Bioethos for Bodies: Respecting a Priceless Resource

The value that willed body donors provide to medical education is priceless. Their precious gift helps to teach anatomy, spatial relationships between morphological structures, anatomical variation, and professionalism to medical students in a way that plastic models, podcasts, and lectures cannot. They are also an important resource for medical research and a wide variety of postgraduate training opportunities. While many body donation programs throughout the world are nonprofit organizations, there are body donation companies in the United States that sell donors for-profit. These “body brokers” have accumulated large profits from this business. It is incongruous that others would profit from such a priceless, freely donated gift. To prevent this incongruity, it is proposed that the international anatomical community develop a normative culture (a bioethos) for body donation programs. This would involve the conscious and systematic development of ethical principles for the day-to-day policies and practices of institutions that collect and use human bodies. With the development of this bioethos, a cultural shift in how donors are treated would occur and, over time, this would become the normal practice. These principles would become fundamental and foundational for the procurement and use of priceless human tissues.     

美国科技编辑概况

在美国 ,科技编辑是一个逐渐被认可的领域。美国的科技编辑们在什么环境下工作 ?他们做什么 ?有什么样的教育背景 ?用什么样的体例手册和其他资源 ?有什么组织为他们服务 ?他们对哪些话题和事件有职业兴趣 ?文章描述了美国科技编辑的概况 ,着重说明上面这些问题。本文的写作在很大程度上依赖于我为科技编辑委员会的期刊《科技编辑》做编辑的经验。本文中 ,“科学”具有广泛的含义 ,包括医学及其相关领域。的确 ,在美国许多科技编辑是医学编辑。　　 工作环境和工作类型在美国 ,有各种各样的媒体雇佣科技编辑 ,这些媒体包括杂志、图书、大众…