Medical students in India are missing out on a crucial rite of passage because of a lack of cadavers for them to learn from.
Logistical issues and cultural sensitivities mean the world's "most populous country" is "running low on bodies", said The Independent, forcing medical schools to adopt anatomical models or digital simulations for training instead.
Reasons for the shortage include "cultural, religious and logistical hurdles", and a "lack of awareness", experts told The Independent. Beliefs around death and the afterlife "complicate the picture" because many families want to perform religious rites soon after death and fear that donating the body to science would delay both that and a sense of closure as they grieve.
Cadaver shortages are not limited to India. The Times reported in March that, "faced with a dwindling supply of fresh bodies to train on", British medical schools were resorting to dealing with the US, where cadavers can be "supplied for profit by anyone", regardless of training or expertise, without any federal laws being broken.
Medical schools the world over have, for the past 10 years, been experimenting with ways of teaching anatomy without a body, replacing real cadavers with virtual ones. But the virtual experience isn't the same, anatomist and cadaver donation advocate Dr Vaishaly Bharambe told The Independent. Although they provide a "study in three dimensions", virtual bodies "cannot ever replace the feel of a real human being". And there is no technology “that will allow you to imagine what different organs inside a person feel like". | 
