TORONTO, October 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A “plastinated” cadaver, holding its own skin in one hand as though holding a trench coat adorns the front page of Dr. Gunther von Hagens website. Another flayed body is depicted suspended in mid-air as though leaping over a track and field hurdle. A skinless cadaver with most of its musculature semi-attached, posed as though running for a bus; a flayed and partially dissected pregnant woman; skinless dead foetuses; a flayed “teacher” with book and chalk in hand; all are part of Dr. von Hagen’s “anatomy art” exhibit, Body Worlds, that he says received fifteen million visitors and toured the world in 1995.
The exhibition is back, this time at the Ontario Science Centre that says the purpose of the exhibition, Body Worlds 2, is purely educational. The Science Centre website says, “This exhibition displays whole body specimens that reveal bones, muscles, tendons, nerves, blood vessels and organs. Genitals of the body remain…(The exhibit) aims to educate the public about the inner workings of the human body and show the effects of poor health, good health and lifestyle choices.”
“Visitors are drawn to real specimens in a way that they are not to plastic models,” the Science Centre says.
However, the Science Centre has not lost out on promoting the macabre display as part of it’s Halloween special event, where prizes for best costume will be free passes to the controversial exhibit. One observer dryly pointed out, “People are equally drawn to road accidents we usually call that voyeurism and frown upon it.”
The practice of anatomy has always been a delicate issue for those who believe in the inherent dignity of the human person but understand the need to study human bodies for medical research. But many have accused Hagens of going over the top when he moved from purely scientific application of his work to public displays of partially dissected bodies in “artistic” poses. Some of the milder comments from the 1995 exhibit tour called it ghoulish and macabre.
The cadavers have been treated by a technique developed and patented by Dr. von Hagens in the late 1970’s. Von Hagens, born Gunther Liebchen, of a Polish Jewish family in 1945, spent twenty years as a lecturer in anatomy at the Institutes of Anatomy and Pathology of the University of Heidelberg. In 1979 he patented his plastination technique for preserving anatomical specimens and founded the Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg in 1993.
In 1995, he took the process one step further and went on the road with human bodies and anatomical parts, flayed and partially dissected, posed in life-like postures.
The treated cadavers, that von Hagens calls “Plastinates,” are preserved with reactive polymers. Von Hagens has been in legal hot water several times for obtaining bodies under questionable circumstances.
In 2002, von Hagens broke British law by conducting the first public autopsy in 170 years in a London theatre. He received a letter from Her Majesty’s Inspector of Anatomy warning him that performing a public autopsy would be a criminal act under section 9 of the 1984 Anatomy Act. Local police were present but did not lay charges.
Von Hagens runs two other plastination centres, one in Dalian, China, and another at the State Medical Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
In 2003, Hamburg prosecutors investigated charges of disturbing the dead, based on his photographing plastinated corpses late at night all over Hamburg. There are also legal proceedings against von Hagens in Siberia regarding a shipment of 56 corpses to Heidelberg.
To eContact Ontario Science Centre:
By phone: 416-696-1000
By e-mail: [email protected]
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