Top medical schools are cutting out cadavers from their curriculums, dismaying traditionalists who insist every future doctor needs to poke around a dead person before touching a live one.

But administrators say their students are just too overloaded to take on the tedious chore of dissecting a human body.

"Digging through fat, getting around bone, getting under skin -- these days that's considered too much work," said Robert Trelease, director of integrative anatomy at the University of California at Los Angeles.

This fall, first-year medical students at UCLA will spend about 40 percent less time cutting open bodies in gross anatomy classes. Just up the coast, dissection has been eliminated entirely since 2001 for first-year students at the University of California at San Francisco. Instead, students examine pre-dissected bodies and body parts without picking through skin, fat and connective tissue.

"It's a better way to teach anatomy, something that's more efficient and more effective," said Hugh "Pat" Patterson, adjunct professor of anatomy at UCSF. "Do I want to take a student who's going into ear, nose and throat and have them dissect the foot? Is that something that's really useful for that student? They'll know the foot better, but I doubt that someone going into (ear, nose and throat) is going to use that information."

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