Free Republic

(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...

Controversy has followed an exhibit of preserved, plasticized human bodies around the world. Now, a group of Ohio State University students and faculty members is raising questions about "Bodies … The Exhibition" during its six-month stay in Columbus. Like others, the OSU group is challenging whether the bodies are those of people who died of natural causes, as the exhibit's owners insist, or whether they are those of political prisoners who died in Chinese prisons. Premier Exhibitions, the Atlanta company that brought an exhibit of Titanic artifacts to COSI Columbus in 2005, says it's under suspicion because the bodies came...