There are times when you need to ask a grieving family for these things. But, he added, the use of cadavers to teach intubation techniques is not something that is done on every patient who has died. If a patient has come into the hospital and requires an extremely rare resuscitation procedure that has been performed by a senior physician and that the medical students may not see, then he will ask the family to grant consent for him to teach the procedure to the students while the attending physician watches. Weise said she disagrees with the use of newly deceased patients in general. In addition, despite the controversy, no state has a statute forbidding the use of bodies as teaching instruments, and no court has considered the issue.
Some states do prohibit the mutilation of cadavers, though.
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