Specimens & Ethics

Our bodies come exclusively from Tübingen’s body donation programme. A use of bodies provided by commercial body donor programmes is strictly prohibited due to ethical reasons.

The body donation programme in Tübingen exists since 1965. It abides by the ethical guidelines, the Recommendations of Good Practice of the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists, IFAA)1: “Informed Consent” of body donors, willingness of relatives, transparency, a dignified funeral and commemoration, non-renumeration of body donation, exclusion of commercialisation.

The Clinical Anatomy Tübingen guarantees to abide by these strict ethical recommendations, which was confirmed by the Landesrechnungshof Baden-Württemberg (state audit office of Baden-Württemberg). Income generated by further and continued education classes is solely used to maintain and expand the Clinical Anatomy. This practice is in accordance with current, international ethic considerations regarding intake-generation through body donation2.

Within our offered continued training courses, research and development as well as Sectio chirurgica, picture and video recordings of our specimens are generated. These recordings are part of a Informed Consent by body donors; no individual markings are shown and commercial use is prohibited. The people taking these recordings underwent specific ethical training. It is forbidden for other people to generate any kind of recordings. Video and picture recordings are solely saved on servers in Germany and can only be accessed by entitled personnel in a professional context. Thereby we conform completely to current standards3.

There is a great willingness to enter the body donation programme at the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Tübingen. Currently, more than 4,500 people donated their body. Every year we receive about 200 new request and 100 body donations.

  1. Recommendations of Good Practice for the Donation and Study of Human Bodies and Tissues for Anatomical Examination. IFAA 2012. ↩︎
  2. Champney , T.H., Hildebrandt, S., Gareth Jones , D. and Winkelmann , A. (2019), BODIES R US: Ethical Views on the Commercialization of the Dead in Medical Education and Research. Anat Sci Educ, 12: 317-325. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1809 ↩︎
  3. Cornwall, J., Hildebrandt, S., Champney, T.H., Billings, B., Schmitt, B. and Winkelmann, A. (2024), IFAA recommendations for the ethical use of anatomical images. Anat Sci Educ, 17: 7-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.2349 ↩︎
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