Don't Display Skeletons and Other Human Remains in Museums Without the Deceased's Prior Consent: Ethicist

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm at the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine.

Have you ever been to a museum where there are medical exhibits, bodies, anatomical exhibits, different forms of genetic anomalies, or even freakish examples of human anatomy on display? I have, both in the United States, in places like Philadelphia, and overseas, in places like England.

There are many medical museums out there. Many of them have collections, including skulls, skeletons, medical oddities, conjoined twins, and anomalous fetuses with strange and terrible genetic defects. Very few of the museums have permission or consent for any of these materials. There are many museums that display things like skeletons from 19th-century criminals who were executed. None of those people gave consent to be on display.

Let me tell you a story about the Hunterian Museum in England. Recently, the Royal College of Surgeons announcedthat it was going to take out of a display case the so-called Irish giant: a man who was 7 ft 7 in tall, who had died in 1783, I believe it was. During his life, he had been something of a celebrity, with many doctors and scientists coming to examine him.