Today, nearly all medical students must perform a human dissection. People volunteer to donate their bodies for study after thei
r death. Body donation was not a practice during the Renaissance. Artists and scientists such as Vesalius and da Vinci dissected the bodies of executed criminals. The criminals had not given their permission for this. Do you think it was okay for Renaissance researchers to dissect human bodies without permission? Why or why not?
Consent, in all things, is good. While medical knowledge is important, people have and should retain control of their body unless they give consent to the contrary.
