About Us

The Institute of Clinical Anatomy and Cell Analysis is one of the world’s leading surgical training centres for working with human specimens. With three operating areas and 12 fully equipped operating stations, Clinical Anatomy Tübingen provides a platform for clinical continuing education and training (CET) as well as research and development (R&D).

Specimens & Body Donation Programme

The specimens for our continuing education and training courses are exclusively procured by the Tübingen body donation programme. The use of specimens from commercial providers is fundamentally rejected for ethical reasons.

The Tübingen body donation programme has been running since 1965 and adheres to the ethical guidelines of the Recommendations of Good Practice by the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA)¹: informed consent of donors, willingness of relatives, transparency, dignified burial and commemoration, non-remuneration of body donation, and exclusion of commercialization.

There is a great willingness to enter the body donation programme at the Institute of Anatomy of the University of Tübingen. Currently, more than 4,500 people donated their body. Every year we receive about 200 new request and 100 body donations.

Ethics

The Clinical Anatomy Tübingen guarantees to abide by these strict ethical recommendations, which was confirmed by the Landesrechnungshof Baden-Württemberg (state audit office of Baden-Württemberg). Income generated by continuing education and training classes is solely used to maintain and expand the Clinical Anatomy. This practice is in accordance with current, international ethic considerations regarding intake-generation through body donation².

Picture and Video Recordings

Within our offered continued training courses, research and development as well as Sectio chirurgica, picture and video recordings of our specimens are generated. These recordings are part of a Informed Consent by body donors; no individual markings are shown and commercial use is prohibited. The people taking these recordings underwent specific ethical training. It is forbidden for other people to generate any kind of recordings. Video and picture recordings are solely saved on servers in Germany and can only be accessed by entitled personnel in a professional context. Thereby we conform completely to current standards³.

1. Recommendations of Good Practice for the Donation and Study of Human Bodies and Tissues for Anatomical Examination. IFAA 2012. ↩︎
2. Champney , T.H., Hildebrandt, S., Gareth Jones , D. and Winkelmann , A. (2019), BODIES R US: Ethical Views on the Commercialization of the Dead in Medical Education and Research. Anat Sci Educ, 12: 317-325. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1809 ↩︎
3. Cornwall, J., Hildebrandt, S., Champney, T.H., Billings, B., Schmitt, B. and Winkelmann, A. (2024), IFAA recommendations for the ethical use of anatomical images. Anat Sci Educ, 17: 7-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.2349 ↩︎