Pelvic Exams
Who knew? I guess I should have, but now I do thanks to this front page article in The Washington Post. If you go into the hospital for a medical procedure and are anesthetized interns practice pelvic exams on you routinely. "Everyone I spoke with there acknowledged they normally do that,"

And many of the medical professionals are astonished that people might object to being used as a practice object without your knowledge and consent. Apparently they are so accustomed to thinking of "patients" as "bodies" that they can't imagine there may be an ethical issue.

So let's rethink this just for a second. A man enters the hospital for polyp removal and interns practice doing rectal exams while he is out. Any problem there? Any outrage? Good. Read this sentence: "rectal examinations by students are sometimes done on patients undergoing prostate surgery."