A eulogy for the autopsy, and a call for its return
Evidence-based medicine and health insurers generally focus on what’s medically necessary, not what’s epidemiologically relevant, not what soothes the mind of the bereaved or of the physician grieved and mystified by the loss of a patient.
Once, the autopsy was a venerated tool for medical advancement and humility. An invaluable means of learning one’s own limitations and the extraordinary diversity in nature and human physiology, it has now become an unreimbursed …