Tycoons, cadavers and a cutting-edge school

EYES WIDE OPEN

- IRIS GONZALES

A cold female cadaver is laid out almost grotesquely on the table, ready for dissection, as tycoons Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Helen Yuchengco-Dee and Yvonne Yuchengco watched with wide-eyed awe while doctors explained the insides of the human body.

It's not for the faint-hearted or those who may easily feel grossed out. The cadaver, after all, is in all its naked glory—cold and, to a certain extent, gory.

Mrs. Dee, however, stood close to the cadaver, asking about the digestive organs, while JAZA watched from a distance, keenly observing this instant pop-up anatomy lesson.

We are at the Human Health Learning and Innovation Center of the Mapúa School of Medicine in Makati. It is a new, cutting-edge school of medicine launched by the Mapúa University in collaboration with Arizona State University.

Mapúa is the flagship university of iPeople Inc., the education powerhouse of the Yuchengco Group's House of Investments and Ayala Corp., "whose goal is to make world-class education accessible to as many Filipino students as possible."

The occasion was a tour of the new facility and I was fortunate enough to join members of the university's Board of Trustees and iPeople officials at the event.

I was impressed with the modern and innovative facilities that I saw.

The cadaver shown to us, for instance, is a synthetic cadaver, which replaces traditional ones.