Medical Students’ Assessment of Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas: Topographical Anatomy of Man

"Where my responsibility lies": Reflecting on medicine during the Holocaust to support personal and professional identity formation in health professions education

Objectives

Physicians and the medical/scientific establishment during Nazism and the Holocaust committed egregious ethical violations including complicity with genocide. Critical reflection on this history serves as a powerful platform for scaffolding morally resilient professional identity formation (PIF) with striking relevance for contemporary health professions education and practice. Study aim was to explore the impact of an Auschwitz Memorial study trip within the context of a medicine during Nazism and the Holocaust curriculum on students' personal and PIF.

Methods

The authors analyzed 44 medical and psychology students' reflective writings from a 2019 Auschwitz Memorial study trip using immersion-crystallization qualitative thematic analysis.

Results

Six distinct themes and 22 subthemes were identified and mapped to a reflective learning process model: 1. "What am I bringing?" 2. "What am I experiencing through the curriculum?" 3. "What am I initially becoming aware of as a first response?" 4./5. "How and what am I processing?" 6. "What am I taking with me?" Particularly compelling subthemes of power of the place, emotional experience, reflection on myself as a moral person, and contemporary relevance referred to impactful course elements.

Conclusions

This curriculum catalyzed a critically reflective learning/meaning-making process supporting personal and PIF including critical consciousness, ethical awareness, and professional values. Formative curriculum elements include narrative, supporting emotional aspects of learning, and guided reflection on moral implications. The authors propose Medicine during Nazism and the Holocaust curriculum as a fundamental health professions education component cultivating attitudes, values, and behaviors for empathic, moral leadership within inevitable healthcare challenges.

Oral and maxillofacial surgeons' assessment of the role of Pernkopf's atlas in surgical practice

BACKGROUND

The use of the Pernkopf atlas of human anatomy in surgery presents ethical challenges due to the author's association with the Nazi regime and the potential depiction of victims of this regime. The atlas was of particular utility to two surgical specialties: nerve surgeons and oral and maxillofacial surgeons. The representation of peripheral nerves and complex head and neck anatomy is probably unequaled in any other atlas of anatomy. While the ethical implications of the use of Pernkopf's atlas among nerve surgeons have been previously assessed, this study focuses on the volume dedicated to detailed images of head and neck dissections, and the ethical implications of using this atlas by oral and maxillofacial surgeons.

OBJECTIVE

To (1) assess the role of the Pernkopf atlas in oral and maxillofacial surgeons' current practice and (2) determine whether a proposal of four conditions would provide ethical guidance for use in surgery and education.

METHODS

Members of three American oral and maxillofacial surgical societies (ACOMS, ASTMJS, AAOMS) were surveyed and 181 responses collected. The survey introduced the historical origin of the Pernkopf atlas, and respondents were asked whether they would use the atlas under specific conditions that could be a recommendation for its ethical handling. An anatomical plate comparison between Netter's and Pernkopf's atlases was performed to compare accuracy and surgical utility.

RESULTS

Forty-nine percent of respondents were aware of the Pernkopf atlas, and 9% of respondents were currently using it. Amongst those aware of the historical facts, 42% were comfortable using the atlas, 33% uncomfortable, and 25% undecided. The four conditions involving disclosure, bioethical and religious considerations, and remembrance led to 75% of those "uncomfortable" and "undecided" becoming "comfortable" with use.

CONCLUSIONS

Amid recent developments and controversy regarding the Pernkopf atlas, a proposal detailing conditions for an ethical approach may provide guidance in surgical planning and education. Furthermore, this approach has implications for the future preparation and publication of anatomical atlases and their use.

Three-dimensional Printing in Anatomy Education: Assessing Potential Ethical Dimensions

New technological developments have frequently had major consequences for anatomy education, and have raised ethical queries for anatomy educators. The advent of three-dimensional (3D) printing of human material is showing considerable promise as an educational tool that fits alongside cadaveric dissection, plastination, computer simulation, and anatomical models and images. At first glance its ethical implications appear minimal, and yet the more extensive ethical implications around clinical bioprinting suggest that a cautious approach to 3D printing in the dissecting room is in order. Following an overview of early groundbreaking studies into 3D printing of prosections, organs, and archived fetal material, it has become clear that their origin, using donated bodies or 3D files available on the Internet, has ethical overtones. The dynamic presented by digital technology raises questions about the nature of the consent provided by the body donor, reasons for 3D printing, the extent to which it will be commercialized, and its comparative advantages over other available teaching resources. In exploring questions like these, the place of 3D printing within a hierarchical sequence of value is outlined. Discussion centers on the significance of local usage of prints, the challenges created by regarding 3D prints as disposable property, the importance of retaining the human side to anatomy, and the unacceptability of obtaining 3D-printed material from unclaimed bodies. It is concluded that the scientific tenor of 3D processes represents a move away from the human person, so that efforts are required to prevent them accentuating depersonalization and commodification.

Ethical considerations in the use of Pernkopf's Atlas of Anatomy: A surgical case study

The use of Eduard Pernkopf's anatomic atlas presents ethical challenges for modern surgery concerning the use of data resulting from abusive scientific work. In the 1980s and 1990s, historic investigations revealed that Pernkopf was an active National Socialist (Nazi) functionary at the University of Vienna and that among the bodies depicted in the atlas were those of Nazi victims. Since then, discussions persist concerning the ethicality of the continued use of the atlas, because some surgeons still rely on information from this anatomic resource for procedural planning. The ethical implications relevant to the use of this atlas in the care of surgical patients have not been discussed in detail. Based on a recapitulation of the main arguments from the historic controversy surrounding the use of Pernkopf's atlas, this study presents an actual patient case to illustrate some of the ethical considerations relevant to the decision of whether to use the atlas in surgery. This investigation aims to provide a historic and ethical framework for questions concerning the use of the Pernkopf atlas in the management of anatomically complex and difficult surgical cases, with special attention to implications for medical ethics drawn from Jewish law.