Dr Flavio Uribe said he was unaware of his surroundings when the selfie was taken. (Congress of the European Orthodontic Society)
An assistant professor at Yale said he was unaware of his surroundings last summer when someone took a selfie with him, graduate students and two severed heads on a table facing up.
Dr Flavio Uribe, an assistant professor and orthodontics program director at UConn Health and a visiting associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine, was teaching students how to place screws in the cadavers' heads. At one point, he said, someone took a photo.
Several graduate students are seen looking at the camera, while others continue to work. All are wearing surgical masks in the photo taken last June.
“Somebody unfortunately took a photo,” Uribe said. “It was so quick. I wasn’t sure of the surroundings or scenery at that point.”
Officials at Yale and UConn Health said the universities have taken steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Yale officials said they are improving oversight at such training events and making participants agree in writing to ethical standards of conduct.
The selfie was taken in June at the Yale School of Medicine during the 2017 DePuy Synthes Future Leaders Workshop, which focused on dental-related facial deformities.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the photo from a person who received it through a private group chat. That person, who demanded anonymity because of potential harm to their career, said the person who took the selfie would not give the AP permission to publish it for fear of being expelled.
Christopher Hyers, UConn Health’s chief communications officer, said in a statement: “UConn Health was made aware of the matter at the time it happened and took appropriate internal steps.”
Uribe said he has never been disciplined by UConn for any reason.
Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy said the School of Medicine took the matter very seriously. He said there was clear signage forbidding photography at each entrance to the laboratory. He also said the symposium was not part of Yale’s anatomy program, and the heads in the selfie were not donated to Yale.
“The photograph taken at a symposium at Yale was disturbing and an inexcusable deviation from anything Yale would expect to occur,” Conroy said in a statement.
“The faculty member who was involved in the training at which the photograph was taken has been informed of Yale’s expectations in this regard.”
It was not clear how the heads were obtained.
Lawrence Rizzolo, a surgery professor and director of medical studies at the Yale School of Medicine, called the selfie “an egregious violation of Yale policy” in an email, obtained by the AP, responding to a person who made a complaint about the photo.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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