We all go too far sometimes in what we say or do. Nobody is perfect. However, for all of us there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed, territory which decent people with a sense of right and wrong and a moral compass know to avoid.
Most of us know when something is so deeply disrespectful or odious that such an action should never be indulged. Those who fail to see that should never be in a position of trust or authority.
This week we had the misfortune to hear the most ghoulish news to come out of the University of Otago since it was revealed first-year students in horrific flat initiations last year bit the legs off live ducks.
This time, the disclosures were just about as bad as they could get or one could imagine — medical students tampering with bodies donated for anatomical and other teaching.
Details provided by the university of what happened in the particular incident or incidents are scarce, which is probably a good thing. But so are important specifics of exactly how many students were involved, how the university investigated the cases, what disciplinary action was taken, and whether they informed the families of the deceased about the interference (we hope they did).
The community deserves to know more about the protocols around keeping human remains safe and sacred, why these obviously failed on this occasion or occasions, and what the university is going to do to assure relatives that any loved ones they donate for medical research will not be at risk of similar gruesome meddling.
The university’s response to an Official Information Act request from the ODT said fewer than five students had been caught acting inappropriately with cadavers and human remains in the past three years out of 1800 students at the Otago Medical School.
No further details would be released because there was a risk the offenders would be identified and their personal information revealed.
That may be very well be the case, but this “handful” of students are hardly the innocent parties here. What about the sanctity of the bodies they interfered with? The egregious breaching of long-held worldwide customs of respect for the dead and of tikanga Māori?
The medical school has been receiving body bequests for more than 80 years. Each year several dozen are received. According to Bioethics Centre Assoc Prof Neil Pickering, dissection takes place in carefully controlled conditions and students are made well aware of the value of the bodies and their duty of care towards them.
Acting vice-chancellor Prof Richard Blaikie said students being allowed to work with donated bodies was a privilege “which calls for the highest levels of sensitivity and respect”.
The university would not tolerate disrespectful behaviour and there were procedures to respond to any ethical breaches, which, if significant enough, could lead to a student’s continuation being “reviewed”.
As an explanation, that’s pretty underwhelming. Without further detail, what confidence can we have that a “review” is going to be robust enough to deal with such appalling behaviour and ensure it doesn’t happen again? What has happened to the perpetrators?
The university needs to give its wider community assurances that this is never going to happen again.
Waves of protest
From the “where’s some common sense when you need it” files comes the news of GNS Science’s plans to cut researchers engaged in understanding possibly the biggest natural threat to life in New Zealand, a tsunami generated by a magnitude 8.0 or higher earthquake along the Hikurangi Subduction Zone east of the southern North Island.
Any major tsunami from a megathrust earthquake on this plate boundary could kill more than 20,000 people and injure as many.
Scientists believe there is a 25% chance of this happening in the next 50 years.
Now, 85 scientists from around the world have signed a letter to GNS Science warning of the very high costs to life and livelihood of turning away from such research.
GNS Science is not immune to the government’s cuts, but this is just ridiculous.