Investigation: How Bodies Were Obtained In China

Local 12 WKRC-TV Cincinnati ^ | February 16, 2008 | Local 12 WKRC-TV Cincinnati

[JACKRUSSELL]

"Bodies...the Exhibition" has drawn thousands to the Cincinnati Museum Center, but now the company behind it is part of an investigation.

The New York Attorney General's Office tells Local 12, its looking into possible misrepresentations concerning how some of those human bodies were obtained in China.

Museum center officials say they're approaching 40,000 tickets sold in just 15 days.

Now, the company profiting from the bodies is now under investigation.

The New York State Attorney General's Office has issued subpoenas for organizers at Premier Exhibitions Incorporated. That's the same company the museum center is using to put bodies on display in Cincinnati for $23.00 for an adult ticket.

The museum center is aware of the investigation.

"We can't speculate on what any investigation may or may not show," said Douglass McDonald, Cincinnati Museum Center. "Obviously, any investigation that showed a serious matter, we take very seriously. We do whatever is the right thing to do at that point."

"I think it's extremely important in terms of education that people know the whole truth about these things," said Morris Tsai, boycotting exhibit.

Tsai has been asking questions about where the bodies came from since they were hauled to Cincinnati.

Now, an ABC News investigation reveals the doctor who came up with the process to "plasticize" the bodies no longer uses bodies from China after some were found to be executed prisoners.

Tsai is calling for the Ohio attorney general to find out where the bodies on display in Cincinnati are from, and more.

"If any of the bodies are in question, I think the museum center should take the high road and shut it down until they know exactly where the bodies came from," said Tsai.

Premier Exhibitions issued a statement to Local 12 Friday night, blasting the ABC News report, and blaming a rival bodies company for the allegations about black market bodies and executed prisoners. They say the bodies in the Cincinnati exhibit died of natural causes.

A protest outside the museum center is planned from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Saturday.

"Bodies...the Exhibition" is scheduled to run until September 1st.

Local 12 is one of the sponsors of the exhibit.

[JACKRUSSELL]

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

[goodwithagun]

I heard about this a while back. Basically, some doctors that saw the exhibit were disturbed by how “clean” the bodies were. If they had died of natural causes, there would have been evidence. They speculated that the humans were killed in a specific way as to not disturb anything so that they could be put on display. Premeditated murder.

[JACKRUSSELL]

More details here:

Brian Ross Cracks a Case

[nuconvert]

Lol. Like your tagline

[goodwithagun]

Thanks. I was between that and “If guns kill people then spoons make Rosie O’Donnell fat.”

[Katya]

It’s interesting there are two competing exhibitions using plasticine bodies. Gunther von Hagens Body Worlds, is the original...and then “Bodies the exhibition” came along as a copycat. Von Hagens actually won a lawsuit, proving that he has consent for every body exhibited. But his plasticine institute which also prepares the bodies for other commercial entities does not necessarily know their origins.

[spectre]

This is SICK! SICK, SICK, SICK!

It's a real life House of Wax experience.

sw

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

They say the bodies in the Cincinnati exhibit died of natural causes.

[Bogie]

Hey, they are just trying to make a few bucks.

[Puddleglum]

There’s one of these exhibits at a museum in Oklahoma City. TO me it’s just grisly and, well, de-humanizing. I can’t believe this Bible-belt state has tolerated it without an uproar. It is macabre.

[nuconvert]

Lol. Well, you could alternate

[Bogie]

Some people don't make a connection between the Bible and pro-life.

A theological mistake for sure, but very much a part of the world we live in.

[nuconvert]

Why would anyone trust the Chinese to tell them the truth about something like this?

Silly question .... $$$

[JACKRUSSELL]

Anatomy of Worldwide Body Trade

Human Bodies on Display: Where Do They Come From?

N.Y., China Investigating Black Market in Bodies


A body processing factory on the German-Polish border, the so-called corpse receiving room of the inventor of plastination, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, is one of the places where it begins. Here the bodies are donated by Europeans and Americans. But von Hagens says his process of preserving real bodies has been overtaken by greed, which has turned it into something reprehensible. "I am concerned that public exhibitions are hijacked by corporate interests," he told ABC News. (ABC News)


One of the leading exhibitors of bodies leases bodies from a company which operates out of this rundown building in northern China, on the outskirts of town, the road outside littered with rotting garbage, where ABC News undercover cameras saw what had been, until now, kept well-hidden. (ABC News)


ABC News' investigation into the business of bodies began after a package was mistakenly delivered to the people who live in this house in Grand Rapids, Mich. (ABC News)


The Larmandes, who recently moved to the U.S. from France, had expected just a build-it-yourself table, but an extra bubble-wrapped package came with it. (ABC News)


Inside the bubble-wrap package was a human head, preserved in plastic. "And I dropped everything," Ludivine Larmande told ABC News. "I looked at my husband, I said, 'Did you see what I saw?'" The Larmandes called the police, who soon discovered the human head had come from China. (ABC News)


The preserved human head was supposed to have been delivered to this company in Traverse City, Mich., Corcoran Laboratories. (ABC News)


The former employee told us he took the photos on his frist trip to the facility where he was shown what was available. On his second trip, he says he began picking up bodies and was not able to take photos. (ABC News)


This image and the one on the next slide, he says, were taken four years ago in another city where the bodies of executed prisoners are essentially sold for about $200. Some of the bodies were sent to medical schools, and some of them, he says, to the Dalian company that supplies bodies for display in the United States. (ABC News)


The man who made all of this possible in the first place is a German doctor -- Dr. Gunther von Hagens. Wearing his trademark black fedora, Dr. von Hagens gave "20/20" full access to his body factory and its gruesome process. Called Dr. Death by some European newspapers, von Hagens invented and patented what is called human plastination in the 1970s, initially, he says, to produce specimens for medical schools. But in 1995 he opened his first show to the public in Japan and has since made millions. His most recent show just opened in Baltimore. (ABC News)


Von Hagens calls this saxophone-serenading body Bill Clinton, once a 76-year-old German bank clerk and just one of the thousands of Europeans and Americans who von Hagens says have donated their bodies for public display. (ABC News)

[sinanju]

“It’s interesting there are two competing exhibitions using plasticine bodies. Gunther von Hagens Body Worlds, is the original...and then “Bodies the exhibition” came along as a copycat. Von Hagens actually won a lawsuit, proving that he has consent for every body exhibited. But his plasticine institute which also prepares the bodies for other commercial entities does not necessarily know their origins.”
__________________________________________________________________________________

Von Hagens is truly the model of the “mad genius” and he wants to make sure we all know it. My favorite creepy Von Hagens moment was one interview where he showed the plastinated body of a man he said was his best friend. According to Von Hagens, his friend had been diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer and had asked Von Hagens to preserve him for posterity. The fact that the dead man in question was a visibly magnificent specimen made it unstatedly obvious he must have offed himself before the disease had a chance to wither his physique.

Von Hagens took the moment to add that, of course, he planned to have himself “done” when his time came and thereby outlast King Tut.

I am glad that finally things have gotten past the stage of rumors and that some serious investigating is finally being done. The chinese corpses are so obviously all young and buff, with no signs of old age, disease or violent death. That, and China’s well-established reputation for execution and organ-harvesting so obviously begs the question...

That said, from an aesthetic perspective, I gotta hand it to the old boy. The first time I saw pictures of his technique I was immediately struck by its resemblance to the occasionally whimsical anatomical drawings of the Old Masters...

[sinanju]

“It’s interesting there are two competing exhibitions using plasticine bodies. Gunther von Hagens Body Worlds, is the original...and then “Bodies the exhibition” came along as a copycat. Von Hagens actually won a lawsuit, proving that he has consent for every body exhibited. But his plasticine institute which also prepares the bodies for other commercial entities does not necessarily know their origins.”
__________________________________________________________________________________

Von Hagens is truly the model of the “mad genius” and he wants to make sure we all know it. My favorite creepy Von Hagens moment was one interview where he showed the plastinated body of a man he said was his best friend. According to Von Hagens, his friend had been diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer and had asked Von Hagens to preserve him for posterity. The fact that the dead man in question was a visibly magnificent specimen made it unstatedly obvious he must have offed himself before the disease had a chance to wither his physique.

Von Hagens took the moment to add that, of course, he planned to have himself “done” when his time came and thereby outlast King Tut.

I am glad that finally things have gotten past the stage of rumors and that some serious investigating is finally being done. The chinese corpses are so obviously all young and buff, with no signs of old age, disease or violent death. That, and China’s well-established reputation for execution and organ-harvesting so obviously begs the question...

That said, from an aesthetic perspective, I gotta hand it to the old boy. The first time I saw pictures of his technique I was immediately struck by its resemblance to the occasionally whimsical anatomical drawings of the Old Masters...

[sinanju]

I have to give ABC credit for investigative reporting.

I well remember a report they did about ten years ago, following China’s organ harvesting business.

They started out tracking down the ads the chicoms put in chinese-language newspapers of the chinese diaspora here in the states. They had ethnic chinese investigators make inquiries, posing as potential customers, conduct hidden camera interviews and get these creeps to spill about how the PLA-run operation was set up and run, how they executed prisoners in scheduled batches and they took care to assure quality merchandise and killed them in ways to make sure not to damage the goods.

It was mighty educational and emmy-worthy, but they never got sufficient credit in my opinion.

[JACKRUSSELL]

Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who invented the process for plastination back in the 1970s, told "20/20" -- through tears -- that some of the bodies he acquired in China a few years ago may have been those of executed prisoners, bodies he said he cremated and never put on public display. "There is now no way for me any more to work with specimens from China so I had to distance myself from that," he said. (ABC News)

[woofie]

Then there is the strange case of this woman who while apparantly still alive has had her head "immortalized" using Von Hagens's plasticine process.