In the Phaedo, just before Socrates' death, Crito asks him how he would like to be interred. Socrates objects to Crito's confusion between Socrates the person -- the soul that will shortly be departing -- and whatever will be left over as the corpse.

Scientific discoveries aside, I can see this sort of art coming back. This kind of tattooos is hauntingly attractive, a postcard from another world.

A dead person is dead and doesn't care anymore. The morbid taboo of not studying dead bodies lead to a looong stagnation in medicine.

Now in terms of practical gains not on the same level, true, but same principle to me.

Grab photo, convert to SVG, load into 3D modeling program, clean up curves to have good surfaces, extrude color-coded heights, map colors to heights in slicer, print.