Union Launches Eighth Plastination Lab in the United States
For more than a decade, Union science and nursing students have benefited from their study of human anatomy thanks to a cadaver lab and the generosity of donors who have bequeathed their bodies to Union for scientific study.
Now, Union students can take advantage of a new development—a plastination lab.
Union recently opened only the eighth active plastination lab in the country, according to Tony Wamble, director of the plastination lab, director of anatomical services and instructor of nursing. The lab opened in January in Providence Hall, and it functions by turning real human and animal organs into plastic, thus preserving tissue.
The process was developed in Germany in 1978 and is more prevalent worldwide than it is in the United States, Wamble says. Many other countries don’t have the legal restrictions that exist in the United States, so it’s easier for the process to be commercialized and profitable.
“The process is time consuming, and patience is required,” Wamble says. “It takes approximately six months to see any results. Few younger professors have been trained to take over the existing labs, and therefore, some of the labs in the U.S. have become inactive.”
Students in Union’s Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist and pharmacy programs do full cadaver dissections each year, a process that takes about 60 hours. As they dissect the cadaver, students discuss pathology and discover diseased organs. Those organs are then harvested (with permission) and preserved in formaldehyde for future teaching purposes.
Even in formaldehyde, however, the organs deteriorate over time. Also, so students are not directly exposed to formaldehyde as they handle the organs, the specimens must go through a time-consuming water bath process prior to the class.
The plastination process works by removing the water from cells and replacing it with acetone. After that, the organ is placed in pure liquid silicone under a vacuum, which causes the acetone to bubble out of the cells and allows the silicone to be sucked into them. The process, which takes about six months from start to finish, results in organs that are not plastic-coated, but are 100 percent plastic throughout.
The plastinated specimens can then be used as models and teaching tools in any field that requires gross anatomical studies. They can also be used for comparing anatomy to CT or MRI imaging. The finished specimens are durable, odor free and anatomically intact.
“One of the great things about plastination is it allows me as a professor to remove artificial barriers to learning,” says Brian Foster, assistant professor of nursing, who has worked with Wamble on creation of the plastination lab. “If you take the ‘ick’ factor away from dealing with cadavers, this allows students to learn more effectively.”
Wamble says the university’s current donor list of anatomical bequests is about 100 people. Union takes those donations seriously, Wamble says, because the human body is God’s creation. The development of the plastination lab will not change how the university handles those donations.
“It’s a very special gift that they give,” he says. “We make sure that we’re handling them with dignity and respect.”
Wamble spent several months raising funds to begin the plastination lab. Now that it has officially launched, he’s moving onto the next phase of the project—raising enough money to open a museum that would present and display some of the plastinated specimens so area grade school and high school students could learn from Union’s efforts as well.
Donations to the museum project can be made by contacting Wamble at rwamble@uu.edu or by contacting the university’s Institutional Advancement office at (731) 661-5050.
Wamble says the plastination lab is another example of the excellent education students can get at Union.
“There’s no other nursing school that can compete with us or with our School of Pharmacy or Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program when you’re talking about the cadaver lab, because that sets us apart already,” he says. “The plastination lab expands upon that and takes the excellence here to another level.”
