Re: Merlin, OK bad example - it's not my specialist area as I made clear, rest of the point remains valid.
Re: gory bits. We still live in a moderately dangerous world, most of us have had the misfortune to lose friends or family to accident or disease of some form (personally I've lost 5 colleagues to air accidents, in two cases I had met their families; I'm sure I'm not particularly unusual) . This tends to make most of us aware of the consequences of safety failure in any sphere. I fail to see why being directly exposed to the actual mess would make make us more or less professional than we should be already - possibly when trying to do a difficult technical job I think it's more likely to cloud the judgement. Additionally, I can't see why I as an Engineer and Pilot am likely to learn any more from a dead body than a pathologist could from a bent aeroplane. As specialists we work in our areas and then discuss the results to make sense of the big picture.
G