[JACKRUSSELL]

Inventor of Plastination, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, talks about the process and his creations during a news conference at the Museum of Science in Boston, in this, July 28, 2006, file photo. Von Hagens says he has stopped using bodies from China for fear that some of them may be executed prisoners, ABC News reported on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008. Dr. Gunther von Hagens told ABC's "20/20" that he had to destroy some bodies he had received from China because they had injuries that made him suspect they were execution victims. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, file)

[JACKRUSSELL]

(Please FReepmail me if you would like to be on or off of the list.)

[Disturbin]

I’m sure none of them were political prisoners, and I’m sure none of them suffered in any way.

[the invisib1e hand]

culture-of-death alert.

[Chickensoup]

for fear that some of them may be executed prisoners

Oh, he has a moral scruple after all.

[Radix]

Though there is lots of fascinating stuff in the Body Worlds exhibit. It is in the end, all pretty gross stuff.

I am of two minds concerning the show.

I do know for certain that I would not go to it again.

[KittyKares]

It seems that China will sell anything, whether it is saturated with poison, put together by virtual slaves, or murdered.

[BallyBill]

Achtung: Das is Verboten.

[2harddrive]

MAY be executed cons from China? No joke!! LOL.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Not much point destroying them after paying the people who supplied them.

Personally, I think these exhibitions are pretty sick. Most people seem to be attending them with a “Gee whiz!” or “Eewww gross!” attitude, not out of serious intellectual or academic interest. The few people who attend out of serious intellectual or academic interest often end up viewing the bodies in an atmosphere dominated by giggling and sick-joking schoolchildren. As for Chinese people “voluntarily” donating their bodies for this purpose, that’s really BS. They can’t even fathom this sort of profit-making, slickly marketed, gawking extravaganza, so they would have no idea what they were really volunteering their bodies for.

[PghBaldy]

China has already admitted using fetuses and executed prisoner parts for make-up, so I just assumed these were political prisoners in these exhibits. One of them was in Pittsburgh recently. Ghoulish.

[JSDude1]

The whole display is gross and morbid to me it’s just something that grates on my conscience. Now if they were plastic models I would find nothing wrong with this, but the irreverence, and not really using 1 or 2 to show science-ALA Medical schools, it’s just gross and disturbing! He puts them “in poker stance”?? This guy ought to be ashamed, but what a wondrous and brave new world (postmodern) society we live in..

[pbmaltzman]

Back when I was going to college (Cal. State Long Beach), I took anatomy classes in both the Anatomy & Physiology Department AND in the Art Department. In both classes we used real cadavers... which had been voluntarily donated to science.

Some of the cadavers had been dissected by various students in certain classes, before they were used in the anatomy classes.

I can assure you that there is a world of difference between looking at plastic models and studying from real cadavers.

Yes, it's gross and fascinating at the same time. One particular class (which I did not take) entailed very tedious, specific regional dissection of a cadaver for one whole semester. I was once in that lab at the same time they were dissecting. Fascinating and gross... I could not go eat fried chicken after viewing and smelling that class.

It may sound sacrilegious to some, but I for one would not want to be worked on by a doctor who had not studied actual cadavers.

And yes, I agree with the objections to plastinated bodies which had been obtained from Chinese prisoners (without their consent)

IIRC, there was some sort of project which consisted of a lot of CT scan cross-sections of both a male and female body. It's on the Internet somewhere. I think that the guy may have been a U.S. prisoner, but it's my understanding that he voluntarily donated his body for this project. Maybe that's apocryphal, but it's what I heard. The woman also voluntarily donated her body to this project.

[fullchroma]

These cadavers are from hapless dead people who donated their body to "science."

From the Body Worlds website:

Body Donation for Plastination

All anatomical specimens on display in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions are authentic. They belonged to people who declared during their lifetime that their bodies should be made available after their deaths for the qualification of physicians and the instruction of laypersons. Many donors underscore that by donating their body, they want to be useful to others even after their death. Their selfless donations allow us to gain unique insights into human bodies, which have thus far been reserved for physicians at best. Therefore, we wish to thank the living and deceased body donors.

[Age of Reason]

Ghouls