Free Republic

DURING 15 years of confinement in psychiatric institutions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Dimitri Gerasimenko was starved and repeatedly beaten. The indignities did not end with his death five years ago at the age of 30.Staff at the ramshackle asylum 50 miles from Bishkek, the capital, have never told his mother Raisa, 65, how he died. All her attempts to retrieve his remains have been met with prevarication, compounding her grief. “First I was asked for money if I wanted the body back,” she said. “Then I was told Dimitri had been sent to a medical academy. When...

South Los Angeles resident Erlyne Toney-Alvarez, 67, had always planned to be cremated when she died. Simple. Inexpensive. Graves, she said, are a waste of land occupied by the dead. Then she saw the intricately plastinated bodies at the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center -- bodies that had been stripped of their fat, filled with plastics and shown off in all their muscular, organic and anatomical glory for the world to see in traveling shows. Now that, she thought, is the way she wants to go. "I was so excited," she said of seeing the exhibit with...

"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...

(NEW YORK) — The doctor behind the "Body Worlds" exhibits that show cadavers in different poses says he has stopped using bodies from China for fear that some of them may be executed prisoners, ABC News reported on Friday. 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. The doctor invented a liquid plastic process that preserves bodies. He has put many of them on display in museum exhibits that show them in poses like playing poker or...

(SACRAMENTO) -- Cars packed the parking lot of a shuttered CompUSA store one recent weekday afternoon as schoolchildren, health professionals and the just plain curious paid $24 apiece to stare at a score of plasticized, dissected human cadavers and roomfuls of preserved body parts. The cadavers are displayed dramatically, with layers of skin and muscle peeled back to reveal internal organs, bones, blood vessels and nerves. The exhibition, with bodies posed as if playing a violin, swinging a golf club or performing other tasks, provoked plenty of hushed comments.   "Where do they come from?" a young woman asked a...

It's easy to see why the Science Museum's new show -- "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies" -- is drawing record crowds. The "plastinated" human cadavers and body parts produce gasps of wonder at the body's intricate complexity. . . .As I walked through the show this week, I could see how visitors might find its "whole-body specimens" beautiful in a strange way. They are lean and vigorous -- physically perfect in a way few museum-goers seemed to be. Many of the "plastinates" draw double takes: the female archer, who looks like the goddess of the hunt,...

Everybody in the house is all worked up about the no-skin show at the Science Museum. It opened Friday and is expected to draw 400,000 people to downtown St. Paul in a summer-long run. If Louie Arvanitis is ever going to reopen the Coney Island on St. Peter Street, now is the time. This is brass bands and straw hats for the restaurant business. Besides, a little chili on a hot dog will look normal after a trip to the dissection festival up the street. "Are you going to go with us?'' they have wondered of yours truly. "You've got...

Exposing Shocking Horrors Inside Sujiatun Concentration Camp By Ji Da Epoch Times Staff Mar 11, 2006 A reporter from China who worked for a Japanese television news agency and specialized in Chinese news recently escaped to the United States after being wanted in China for reporting on controversial issues. (The Epoch Times) High-res image (1200 x 900 px, 72 dpi) [ Warning: graphic photos below ] Falun Gong Practitioners a Cheap Source of Black Market Organs In recent years, international organ buying and selling markets have had extreme shortages. As the world's most populous country with the death penalty, China...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A pregnant woman lies on her side with a hand behind her head as if posing for a nude photograph. But her dead body isn't the only thing exposed. Her heart, intestines and 8-month-old fetus are visible as well. The woman was one of more than 200 people who donated their cadavers for use in "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies," which makes its U.S. debut Friday at the California Science Center. Intended to teach people about human skeletal, cardiovascular and other systems, the final exhibit includes 25 bodies that have undergone a...

A scientist today told of his quest to create a "superhuman" being - reconstructed from the body of a terminally ill person. German-born Professor Gunter von Hagens from the Institute for Plastination plans to document the whole process - from finding a volunteer to carrying out their posthumous reconstruction - for television. The body - preserved in polymer - will then be saved for future generations. Prof von Hagens said evolution was "flawed". He claimed the ideal human being would have features such as a knee joint that could also bend backwards, no appendix and a second heart in case...