How important is dissection in basic anatomical education? In an attempt to provide an adequate basis for a rigorous answer to this seminal question, a number of subsidiary questions are asked. What is the value of the direct experience of human cadavers? What is the value of dissection? Where does the use of prosections fit in? What are the alternatives? The emphasis throughout is on the need for hard data and serious analysis. To this end, a variety of issues are raised for debate, including the variety of responses demonstrated by students to human cadavers, the importance of dissection for introducing students to aspects of the clinical ethos, the problems raised by students who attempt to bypass dissection, and the relative costs and educational merits of using cadavers and alternative approaches (including prosections and computer-based approaches). The relevance of the debate for histology teaching is also raised.