Posted on 06/24/2007 7:07:29 AM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
The bodies are coming, and with them some questions that will not go away. "Bodies ... The Exhibition,' featuring 15 full-body human corpses from China that have been preserved by a process called "plastination," is scheduled to open at The Carnegie Science Center in October for a seven-month run.
The cadavers are peeled of their skin and arranged in poses -- kicking a soccer ball, setting up a tennis serve -- alongside 200 other body parts and specimens, including embryos and fetuses from 9 to 32 weeks gestation, all plasticized.
It is one of three major traveling exhibits that have been drawing huge crowds around the world. But along with the exhibits' popularity have come ethical and religious concerns.
None of the people who once inhabited the bodies in Bodies gave their consent to be used this way, and that has made some folks profoundly uneasy. Their doubts are compounded by China's record of human rights abuses, including the harvesting of transplant organs from executed prisoners.
One opponent is Elaine Catz, an 11-year employee of the science center who resigned over "Bodies'' last week.
"We don't know how these people died or why they died, and I don't think Premier knows, either," she said, referring to the company, Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta, that is presenting the show. "Before we put our stamp of approval on it, there should be a high burden of proof on Premier.''
Premier says the corpses were unidentified or unclaimed, that every attempt was made to locate relatives before the bodies were turned over to police and then, through proper legal channels, to Premier's Chinese partners at Dalian Medical University's dissection and plastination operation......
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Coming to a museum near you.
I saw that exhibit while it was in Seattle. I completely recommend it. It’s great to move frome looking at 2D anatomy books to seeing the 3D real thing. Very educational
It reminds me of all those charming Victorian exhibitions of tasteless human curios. In NZ, the Dunedin med school still maintains a collection for echibition of malformed foetuses, biological oddities, posed corpes and their ilk.
From the article’s description, I see little difference.
A big thank you to people such as Ms. Catz and Mr. Ginsburg. When this show was in Boston it was a disgrace.
When the “human” is considered merely an animal species evolved to a higher order, you can do anything you want to their bodies. The skin was peeled. Lamp shades, anyone?
I agree to some extent. Overall the exhibit was nifty, BUT...
I did get the sense that some of the bodies were being used more for art than education or science. Cadavers used for art? Hmmm. I’ll pass on that part.
I can’t read it now but it is absolutley horrible.
Did my tax money pay for this stuff?
If so, how much?
There were in fact terrifyingly TOO good. These were all perfectly health young Chinese youths in their early 20's.
I could help but suspect later that these were all cleanly "executed to order" for the "Bodies" company. Youngsters executed for practicing religion, demanding free speech, using the Internet...
There were in fact terrifyingly TOO good. These were all perfectly health Chinese youths in their early 20's.
I could NOT help but suspect later that these were all cleanly "executed to order" for the "Bodies" company. Youngsters executed for practicing religion, demanding free speech, using the Internet...
You should know that the authorities must maintain control at all times over the general population.
While some of the bodies where aranged in a way that seemed more for artistic value than educational, I’d say that I felt the set-up was 80% educational, 20% “art”.
I honestly feel that I can be a better medic by being at the exhibit. I always that the impression that the arteries, even the aorta, were much larger. I would look at a portion and say “If a bullet hit you this way, what would be damaged” and could think about how I would treat somebody. Even the area with the baby fetus’s, you can see what appears to be a tiny face on something so small, and I think that even in a liberal place like Seattle, some people walked away just a little more pro-life.
And it doesn’t bother people in the least. I refused to see it because I think it shows no respect at all for the fact that these were once living people, as human as their audience. But it was here in Florida and I heard a number of people actually joking about going to see “that exhibit of skinned Chinese prisoners.” So it’s not as if the audience didn’t know exactly what they were and how they got there.
Frankly, I was shocked by the attitude of my fellow citizens. But I guess I shouldn’t be shocked by anything anymore.
I think it’s one thing for a person who has a legitimate interest in or need to know more about the subject to see a human body dissected, but it’s quite another to put human bodies on display as a show.
The culture of death finds many avenues to push it’s agenda. Now death is cool and artistic!
“Even the area with the baby fetus’s, you can see what appears to be a tiny face on something so small, and I think that even in a liberal place like Seattle, some people walked away just a little more pro-life.”
Funny story: when we saw our Bodyworks exhibit, my wife was like 8 months pregnant. We went through the maternity section and I could hear soooo many whispers from people who were amazed that my wife was in that section. I had a really good feeling that some people were looking at the dissections and then at the ruddy, happy pregnant complexion of my wife and realizing “it IS a life!”
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