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I drove by the billboard and felt my stomach churn again. I can't make myself see this as a good thing. Looming in lurid color is a billboard for entertainment at a local casino -- an exhibit of over a dozen dead bodies with the skin partially removed, preserved in polymers, posed to display various organs. Some bodies still have their faces (or part of them) on. Some do not. They have all been put through a process called "plastination" so that they will "resist decomposition".
Not everyone who donates their body for use after death suspects it will end up at one of the companies creating these exhibits, posed throwing a frisbee or kicking a soccer ball. Yet there they are, mostly male, but also some females, including at least one pregnant woman, a child or two, some fetuses, lots of organs.
Gunter von Hagens, the man who developed the plastination procedure is based in Germany at BODY WORLDS, his company that develops multiple exhibits simultaneously around the world. His own site says the following about how bodies are obtained :
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.
Note that the donors never said that they'd like their skin peeled off, their bodies dipped in polymers, posed playing cards and set up at an exhibit. Further, The Guardian reports that "In 2004, von Hagens agreed to return seven corpses to China saying he was unable to prove they had not come from executed prisoners. His action followed an investigation in the German magazine der Spiegel."
There is lots of competition for this piece of the entertainment/education/exhibit/sensastionalist pie. Exhibits drawing record crowds globally have been set up in venues as diverse as casinos, museums, and the NYC Pier.
Most company's exhibit sites forbid the copying of pictures without a legal agreement, so click on the sites themselves to see the examples.:
Bodies the Exhibition - see videos of the actual exhibit by clicking here.
Then Amazing Human Body in Australia. Their site speaks about the grisly fact that an exhibit piece was recently stolen
Our Body, the Universe Within that says this about their bodies:
All of the anatomical specimens contained in Our Body: The Universe Within originate from China and have been provided for the exhibit consistent with the laws of China. The anatomical specimens are not owned by the exhibitors, but are provided by a Chinese foundation to promote educational and medical research of the human body. While we do not have the specific identity of each anatomical specimen, they have been donated through medical schools and other research facilities in China to promote education, science and medical research of the human body.
As early as 2006, The New York Times reported that over a dozen "body factories" existed in China to turn out preserved corpses.
Inside a series of unmarked buildings, hundreds of Chinese workers, some seated in assembly line formations, are cleaning, cutting, dissecting, preserving and re-engineering human corpses, preparing them for the international museum exhibition market.
“Pull the cover off; pull it off,” one Chinese manager says as a team of workers begin to lift a blanket from the head of a cadaver stored in a stainless steel container filled with formalin, a chemical preservative. “Let’s see the face; show the face...
Dr. Von Hagen has a factory in China, too -- where, according to the Times, "About 260 workers in Dalian process about 30 bodies a year." He is now branching off to include animals as well.
In a large workshop called the positioning room, about 50 medical school graduates work with the dead: picking fat off the cadavers, placing them in seated or standing positions and forcing the corpses to do lifelike things, such as hold a guitar or assume a ballet position. Dr. von Hagens admits these positions are controversial.
“Even my former manager said, ‘Can you really pose a dead man on a dead horse?’ ’’ Dr. von Hagens said. “But I decided this was real
