Marie1234 --
Your question is the gateway to a REAL Internet adventure. The
article is about the Visible Human Project, which began in the
mid-1990s. The National Library of Medicine in Denver froze the body
of a man and a woman who were recently deceased, then sliced each of
the bodies into cross-sections, digitally imaged them, and made the 15
gigabytes of data (for each) available on the web.
These new computer models of the human body of the human body have
been use for:
• simulations to teach surgery techniques
• as a model for reconstructive plastic surgery
• simulations for treating gunshot wounds
• replacing cadavers in anatomy classes
• illustrating injuries in court cases
• creation of virtual crash-test dummies
• animation in movies
There are hundreds of websites with information about the Visible
Human Project, and probably thousands more academic and other sites
which use the data.
The article itself is very well-written, and in New Yorker style
includes a history of dissection. The author, Gordon Grace, notes
that "most cultures have an equally ancient taboo against observing
the interior of the body," as the human body was regarded as "God's
province." Artistotle was forced to dissect monkeys and other animals
for scientific research and it wasn't until the third century that the
Greeks started the practice of dissection, with Galen, a Greek
physician.
It is available online through Proquest Magazines (and it turns out
that the Proquest index is wrong -- The New Yorker is available back
to 1994). Though Proquest is a fee-based service, a library in your
area (or a university library) will have access to the full text of
this article, so I'd recommend checking with the reference desk.
If you gain access to Proquest Magazines directly, I'd suggest:
-- searching by publication (The New Yorker)
-- selecting the date (July 30, 2001)
-- then choosing the title "Slice of Life" (and full text) from among
the 30+ articles in tht issue
I pulled down a full copy of the article, "Slice of Life" by Gordon
Grice, July 30, 2001, Volume 77, Issue 21, of The New Yorker.
Copyright prevents me from posting it here but I can summarize it for
you.
The prisoner involved is Joseph Paul Jernigan, a Texas killer who
killed a farmer. Jernigan was executed on August 4, 1993. He agreed
to donate his body to medical purposes as atonement for the murder.
The execution was with sodium thiopental. The body was "lightly
embalmed" with formaldehyde, then shipped by air to Denver. There the
National Library of Medicine scientists gave the body both MRIs and CT
scans, then froze it solid. A team of scientists then sliced the body
into 1,877 cross-section cuts and took digital photographs of each
slice.
Jernigan was one of about 10 people considered. A Maryland woman, 59,
who had died of heart disease was also chosen, so there's a Visible
Human Female as well as a Visible Human Male and a human fetus.
Originally the National Library of Medicine (NLM) intended to keep the
identity of the donors private and the library never did release the
names -- but journalists identified Jernigan when the NLM revealed
when and where he was executed.
Victor Spitzer, a University of Colorado anatomist who participated in
the team that did the imaging of Jernigan's body, notes in The New
Yorker article that he hopes to slice the next cadaver 30 times more
thinly -- and to extend the research to other body types, ethnic
groups and ages.
Google search strategy:
Use of Proquest Magazine database from local library.
You also find more than 200 links, some with excellent video by using
this Google search:
Jernigan + "Visible Human Project"
Of course one of the best is at the source:
National Library of Medicine
"The Visible Human Project"
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/
Special thanks to TNX1138, a Google Answers researcher in Brazil, who
was unable to complete the answer but gratefully offered support in
answering this question.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
