A cosmetic surgeon in Japan thought it was a good idea to treat an anatomy practice session as some sort of field trip. Users online are calling for her to lose her license – but there’s a high hurdle for that to happen.
Kuroda Aimi (黒田あいみ), a surgeon with Tokyo Cosmetic Surgery, posted the controversial photos and video to her blog and TikTok accounts on December 2nd. In the video, she and other surgeins are seen waving to the camera with the caption, “On our way to dissect a fresh cadaver!”
The rest of the video and the blog post shows photos inside a medical center in Guam, where she and others were receiving medical training using donated cadavers.
The footage showed rows of dead bodies, their faces blurred by mosaic effects, with the title “A lot of heads lined up!” At least one of the heads, however, wasn’t proprly blurred out.
In another scene, Kuroda flashes a peace sign during a medical procedure on a cadaver.
The backlash over the incident has been swift and furious. Online commenters derided what they saw as Kuroda making a mockery of people who’d donated their bodies to science.
“It makes me not want to donate,” wrote one.
“A total lack of humanity,” another posted.
Kuroda has since deleted the videos and her blog post with the photos. Popular social media accounts such as Takizawa Gareso, however, have preserved the posts online.
In a follow-up blog post, she said she “intended to apply a mosaic to all of the bodies but there was an instance where I did not.”
She continued, “I apologize from the bottom of my heart for posts that demonstrated a lack of ethics as a doctor and as a human being.”
Many users online are calling for her to lose her license over the incident. That, however, may well not happen.
Such a case would be taken up by Japan’s Medical Ethics Board, part of the government’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW). Under Japan’s medical laws, a practitioner can be fined or lose their license for acts that “impugn their standing as a doctor.”
A spokesperson for the MHLW’s medical affairs office says, to date, no one has never lost their license in Japan for mishandling of a cadaver. Of the 28 cases brought against physicians and dentists in recent years, only two have resulted in the loss of a license. Both of those involved crimes such as fraud and arson. The case is further complicated because the act occurred in Guam and not in Japan.
It remains to be seen if Kuroda will be called before the Ethics Board. Whether that happens or not, her career in Japan is unlikely to recover.
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