University says ‘appalled’ over cadaver video, professor quits

The University of Malta said yesterday it had accepted the resignation of a professor after a video emerged showing medical students dancing to loud music as a procedure was performed on a cadaver at the anatomy laboratory.

The Italian affiliate associate professor responsible for the Italian trainees shall not be invited again in future and the university has already accepted his resignation, the institution said in a statement.

The video, shot during a session in Malta last week, was published by several sites, including influential Italian news site Corriere della Sera.

It showed the academic cheering students on as they danced to the song Play Jouer. In the background, medical students wearing PPE could be seen working on a cadaver.

“The University of Malta has utmost respect for the cadavers used during certain sessions of medical training and this is a supreme consideration. For this reason, it strongly condemns the action of visiting medical students behaving in such an appalling manner in the anatomy dissecting room,” the university said.

“Surgical and dissection courses are carried out with strict observance of proper decorum for the cadavers. People who decide to leave their bodies to the Department of Anatomy expect nothing less than the highest level of respect and, anything less, is reprehensible.”

The video, which amassed hundreds of thousands of views, drew condemnation from professionals across various faculties, prompting calls for an official statement from the Italian Ministry of Health and the Italian Medical Association.

Cristoforo Pomara, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Catania, responsible for the exercise, said: “The illegally distributed video was made during a break in an anatomical exercise abroad on bodies donated for the purpose of study and training and therefore absolutely detached from the medical-legal professional context.”

“Surgical and dissection courses are carried out with strict observance of proper decorum for the cadavers