July 21, 2023
Science published an article on the Mütter Museum and its current ethical review which included sharing background information on the institution and speaking with leadership about the rationale behind its decision to embark on this strategic course. Part of the article is provided below and can be fully accessed .
But ethical standards for collecting and displaying human specimens have changed over the years. When Kate Quinn, executive director of the Mütter, took over leadership in September 2022, she was surprised to find the museum didn’t have specific ethics policies. “That makes it all the more important for us to move forward together to create an ethics policy for all aspects of [our] work,” she says.
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Staff began to audit every human specimen in May, reviewing how it was acquired and how it is displayed—a process that will take up to 48 months. For each human specimen, “we need to become much more aware of the circumstances of their lives and the times in which they lived,” Quinn says.
Take the Soap Lady. “We know she was taken from her grave,” Quinn says. But the museum doesn’t have information on her identity or records of her or her family’s consent for donation—let alone display. “Personally, do I believe she should go back into the ground? Yeah, probably.” But that decision will be up to the college’s Board of Trustees, after hearing the community’s perspectives and discussing whether there’s a strong medical reason to keep the remains on display. “That’s one case,” Quinn says. “There’s 6500 of them.”
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“We are being as transparent as we can,” Quinn says. “We’re open to all conversations.” The museum is now providing updates to the public in a dedicated page on its website.
She and other experts stress the value of the displays. Zuckerman notes that the Mütter houses bones bearing scars from the late stages of syphilis, rare in patients today. Seeing the early examples helps clinicians recognize the full expression of the untreated disease, she says. “They’ve never seen congenital syphilis before.”
But, Quinn promises, “Everything that we will be doing moving forward is out of respect for the humans involved in this conversation, both living and dead.”