“Cadavers remain a principal teaching tool for anatomists and medical educators teaching gross anatomy. Infectious pathogens in cadavers that present particular risks include Mycobacterium tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, the AIDS virus HIV, and prions that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome (GSS). It is often claimed that fixatives are effective in inactivation of these agents. Unfortunately cadavers, even though they are fixed, may still pose infection hazards to those
who handle them.”
..” The information given above indicates that a cadaver might be still infectious at the time of arrival in an anatomy department for subsequent educational purposes. Therefore, specific safety precautions are mandatory from the moment of the cadaver’s arrival at the facility. ”
Deniz Demiryurek et al., Infective agents in fixed human cadavers: A brief review and suggested
guidelines,The anatomical record(new anat.), 2002