After reading about plastination, the process of preserving a specimen by replacing the water and fat with plastic, I was very excited to visit the Body Worlds 2 exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Science. Dr. Gunther von Hagens developed the technique of plastination in 1977 and opened the first exhibition featuring human bodies preserved by his plastination method. Today the exhibition is among others that are seemingly just like it.
In addition to von Hagen’s Body Worlds, Premier Exhibitions, Inc. is the developer of two plastination exhibitions: Bodies…The Exhibition (recently on view in the D.C. area) and Bodies Revealed (currently on view in Hartford, Connecticut.) While von Hagens set up a body donation plan 20 years ago, with 7600 individuals pledging to donate their bodies, it is not clear where the bodies exhibited by Premier Exhibitions came from. Premier says the bodies used for the show are unclaimed Chinese corpses, but they’ve been accused of using bodies of executed prisoners and others that did not die from natural causes. (According to the Discover Magazine article published on 04.02.2006, the commercial use of such cadavers may seem immoral, but it is not illegal. “A 1984 law allows the use of their bodies for medical purposes without consent.”)
Regardless of whether the bodies displayed were donated by its owner, or taken without consent, all of these exhibitions stir controversy. But I don’t view the exhibitions as a form of entertainment and I didn’t find the show to be exploitative. Instead, the show was moving and educational. Not only was I able to see the awe-inspiring development of a human embryo, but I was also able to see exactly what it looks like to have metal implants in your joints, the effects of Alzheimer’s on the brain, a heart attack, and (poor thing) what the bowels of a woman who died with massive constipation look like.
Ryan, Jill and I visited the museum on Saturday, February 23, 2008.
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