Gunther von Hagens with one of his resin-filled exhibits
Posted on 05/06/2006 4:49:40 AM PDT by aculeus
Gunther von Hagens, the German anatomist who exhibits preserved human corpses after injecting them with a plastic resin, has launched a nationwide body pick-up service to provide him with a "sufficient number" of specimens.
The controversial scientist announced the introduction of the service just as he is about to open a body factory in the east German town of Guben.
Mr von Hagens said the pick-up service would be free to those who had made a written pledge to donate their bodies while still alive, and would "make it possible [for relatives] to mourn without having to worry about burial costs".
The bodies would be brought to Guben to undergo the plastination process in which workers remove body fluids and fat and replace them with a plastic resin.
The Association of German Undertakers, whose members charge at least £2,400 to arrange a burial, has expressed its outrage.
But Mr von Hagens has been welcomed with open arms by the residents of Guben, notorious as a neo-Nazi stronghold, where unemployment stands at 22 per cent and which has lost a third of its citizens due to the lack of jobs since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Mr von Hagens, a multi-millionaire who in 2002 performed the first public autopsy in Britain for 170 years, already has "factories" in Heidelberg, southern Germany, and the Chinese coastal town of Dalian.
He was once accused of using the bodies of executed prisoners from China in his plastination process, but, in 2004 he returned seven corpses which had head injuries because he said he could not prove they had not been executed. German prosecutors launched an investigation but the claims were never proved.
Now by making it easier for Germans to donate their corpses to his cause, Mr von Hagens is seen to be trying to increase the acceptance of his controversial practice by making the way he comes by his specimens more transparent.
He has promised to create between 30 and 200 jobs in Guben and to invest £2.4 million in the project, making him the biggest single investor in the town for almost 80 years.
The authorities have even sold him Guben's town hall, which will become part of the new factory, for the token price of £52,000. The town's former glory, a bankrupt wool factory, will also be put to use.
Following plastination, the corpses are variously sliced up or displayed whole. More than 16 million people around the world have seen Mr von Hagens' Bodyworlds exhibition.
In his shows, a corpse may be exhibited "playing" chess, its brain partly exposed, or an eight-months pregnant woman will recline in a provocative pose.
The only vocal resistance in Guben, where an independent poll suggested 80 per cent of people support Mr von Hagens's plans, has come from a small church-backed group called Human Dignity.
The plan to open in Guben came after the nearby Polish town of Sieniawa Zarska rebuffed Mr von Hagens. On top of strong resistance from the Roman Catholic Church, it was discovered that his father, who was to be the project leader, had been a member of the Nazi SS.
kate.connolly@telegraph.co.uk
Gunther von Hagens with one of his resin-filled exhibits
Bring out your dead!
Now the dead are playthings...
Disgusting.
What the heck is this guy doing with these bodies? Who buys them?
I'm assuming that these aren't just going to med schools.
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