The doctor, a Scottish-accented man in his fifties or sixties, had collected a wall full of diplomas and plaques. Perhaps that’s why he felt entitled to give only the sketchiest of explanations when he told a Midwestern friend of mine that she might need heart surgery to avoid a possible stroke. Karen* would be in the hospital just a day or so. But during this time a surgeon would insert a catheter up her groin and go on to kill off selected heart cells. With luck, the operation would end her atrial fibrillation. It had made her heart throb as quickly as 200 beats a minute on occasion and had sent her to the emergency room. Karen pressed for details about the recommended operation. “Ma’am,” Dr. S. said in a peremptory burr, “this is too technical.” It was Valentine’s Day and Karen and her husband would rather have been thinking about hearts in that way alone. But she wanted to know all. “Ma’am, I’ll draw you a picture,” Dr. S. said a bit grudgingly. The doctor sketched a crude heart that might as well have been on a greeting card. Hastily drawn lines showed how electric impulses were traveling through Karen’s heart with an extra path. The operation would cut off the surplus wiring, so to speak. Well, this was a start. But Karen still felt ignorant, and it was _her_ body into which the catheter would go. And so it is with many patients, not all, but many. Even good doctors don’t always tell enough. The Visible Human Project, however, would make it easier for Karen to learn more. Dr. S. could have shown Karen a computer image of an actual human heart and have pointed to the exact areas that the surgeon would kill off. Karen would have picked up a better appreciation of the complexities of the proposed operation. At the same time, Dr. S. could also have juggled around computer images to show the increased risk of clotting that would result if she _failed_ to have the operation. Karen would have emerged better informed and more confident—or less, whatever the facts justified. Someday she might even be able to dial up on the Internet an animated, perfectly detailed series of pictures of the operation. That was what the Visible Human Project would mean. What’s more, patient education was just one of many uses; the right technology could revolutionize the training of doctors and advance medical research. As far back as the 1980s, such ideas intrigued Michael Ackerman, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering who worked for the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. He heard of a project at the University of Washington that was digitizing the human brain, although not the entire body. Researchers at other schools hoped to do the same with other organs. But they were less keen on collecting images and other data than on using them, so why duplicate each other? Like the Internet itself, then, just one digitized corpse could help many researchers at once.