Body exhibits: Issues more than skin deep

Sipa Press/Giulio Marcocchi: An exhibit from “Body Worlds” in Los Angeles in 2005Four high school students coolly regard a man and a woman who are in more than one sense unclothed, observing the standing bodies from various points. Their comments reflect that blend of innocent curiosity and uncanny knowledge that makes most teenagers so confounding. The students, participants in an advanced science class at North Mercer High School, a public school northeast of Kansas City, are among thousands visiting “Bodies Revealed,” one of the exhibits of plastinated bodies touring the nation since 2005. “Bodies Revealed” is on display through Sept. 1 in Union Station here.

Plastination, a process invented by Gunther von Hagens in 1975, is a form of preserving cadavers that replaces water and fat with plastics. The bodies are stripped not only of clothes, but also of skin, allowing visitors to look deep inside, at the bones, organs, muscles and nerves. Various plastination techniques can preserve just the nervous system or vessels or muscles. Bodies can also be transected to show how various parts work together.

Recognizing that such exhibits have generated considerable controversy, at times intense, North Mercer’s principal, Kim Palmer, said she believes the exhibits are as valuable as each student makes it.

“I think it has great value for those students who are taking time to read the explanations or listen to the audio tour,” Palmer said. “For those who are just seeing the shock value in it, I think it doesn’t hold much use.”

Ethics hotly debated

Sipa Press/Newscom: “Body Worlds 2” at the California Science Center in Los Angeles in 2005The ethics of the body exhibits -- so far seen by at least 25 million paying visitors worldwide -- has been hotly debated since the von Hagens’ first “Body Worlds” exhibit opened in Japan in 1995 and went on tour in Europe and Asia. The exhibit opened in 2004 in Los Angeles, its first U.S. stop. It quickly moved to other major cities and -- as it previously had in Europe -- encountered competition.

Premier Exhibitions Inc. ­-- the sponsor of “Bodies Revealed” -- opened its first rival show, called “Bodies ... the Exhibition,” in Tampa, Fla., in August 2005. Since that opening, the exhibits have been a boon to museums across the country.

Ann Metzger, spokesperson for the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, said Carnegie’s final head count for the show was 266,000. “It’s unprecedented,” Metzger says. “We’ve never had an exhibit this popular.”

At the same time, the exhibits have sparked controversy so consistently that Premier Exhibitions offers seminars for museum personnel on how to deal with the controversy.

Human rights activists and religious groups, including rabbis -- and, increasingly, Catholic bishops -- have criticized the public display of bodies and body parts as fundamentally disrespectful of the dead, and exhibits have been widely denounced for displaying bodies without permission from donors.

The bodies in the Kansas City exhibit are recognizable enough to reveal Asian features. While Premier has admitted to using unclaimed Chinese cadavers for “Bodies ... the Exhibition,” it claims only donated bodies are used in “Bodies Revealed.”

Among Catholics, no consensus rules. While the Pittsburgh diocese used the exhibit last fall to make the case for God’s handiwork, other dioceses have strongly criticized the shows and encouraged Catholic school children to stay away.

Consorting with bodies

In Kansas City, visitors first encounter bones. Skulls and various skeletal parts of adults and children are displayed in cases and supplemented by facts and figures. (Babies have more bones than adults, for example.)

Sipa Press/Newscom: An employee works on a plastinated figure at Gunther von Hagen’s Dalian Institute in China.Next come displays of skeletal, cardiac and smooth muscles -- the point at which the plastination exhibit really begins. Soon viewers are studying the human brain -- one that has aged, one that has atrophied, one that has hemorrhaged.

The brain display introduces one of the distinct elements of plastination -- pinpointing elements of the human body. In this case, the vessels of the brain have been preserved while the rest of the matter is burned away, revealing a complex highway for blood. This is how most of the exhibit works. Whole examples of the human body are displayed with concentrations on certain parts.

In the second main room, fully plasticized bodies are displayed at play -- one is throwing a baseball, another is ready to bat, another is riding a bicycle and still another playing a violin. One body appears to have wires dangling from it -- strands that in fact are nerves running from the central nervous system outward.

A room is dedicated to the circulatory system, displaying plasticized hearts and lungs, in varying degrees of health. Blood vessels of the lung and a gall bladder are highlighted, as are arteries of an upper arm, so intricate it almost looks like fabric. A section of the exhibit is dedicated to showing the effects of lifestyle choices, such as smoking, on vessels and organs.

A sex and reproduction segment -- where the high school students were found -- demonstrates how the sex organs work in concert with the rest of the body. A display of plasticized fetuses illustrates the rapid development of the human body in utero.

One of the most vivid portions of the exhibit is the “sliced” bodies. The process begins by plasticizing the entire body, and in this case, cutting the corpse vertically in slices about six inches thick. Each slice is encased in plastic and stands in relation to the next, affording a close-up of how the lungs are positioned next to the heart, how the muscles connect.

The last section of the exhibit displays another sliced body, this time cut horizontally from head to toe and displayed on an inclined table, demonstrating how a magnetic resonance image (MRI) is created.

“It’s really possible, as you work your way through the exhibit, to understand how the systems of the body actually work,” Metzger said. “There’s no other process of learning that can exhibit the variability of the human body.”

Opposition or opportunity?

In Pittsburgh, the diocese went beyond endorsing the educational value of the show, remarking on its spiritual value as well. Stating that, for anyone over the age of 12, the exhibit “can provide worthwhile and effective opportunities to promote learning,” the diocese published a 12-page tract answering questions about the exhibit.

“Hopefully, all who attend will be inspired to praise the Creator through this exhibit,” the tract reads. “Perhaps some will commit themselves to serve humanity through the cultivation of medical and scientific research,” a diocesan statement said.

Several other bishops and archbishops though have found little to recommend.

Daniel E. Pilarczyk, archbishop of Cincinnati, wrote, “The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unidentified, and displayed without reverence, is unseemly and inappropriate.” His statement referred to “Bodies ... The Exhibition” on display at Cincinnati Museum Center until Sept. 1.

Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn and Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann embellished on Pilarczyk’s theme in a joint statement on “Bodies Revealed” that complained, “It represents a kind of ‘human taxidermy’ that degrades the actual people who, through their bodies, once lived, loved, prayed and died.”

All three disapproving bishops stated that the exhibits are inappropriate for Catholic school field trips. St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke suggested the same when “Body Worlds 3” -- which takes a less clinical, more artistic approach to the displays than “Bodies Revealed” -- appeared in his city last summer. Burke urged parents to cautiously evaluate the content of the show before taking their offspring.

Canada’s Vancouver archdiocese put out a statement pointing to the catechism’s entry on respect for the dead: “The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.”

Willing models?

In addition to lack of reverence, the displays have been criticized for promoting gender stereotypes (women, critics say, tend to be shown in passive roles) and for promoting trafficking of dead human bodies for profit. Thomas S. Hibbs, distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University, writing in The New Atlantis, asserts the exhibits purvey a “pornography of the dead.” A host of media critics and bloggers have questioned the tastefulness of the shows.

Several governmental bodies in the United States and abroad, seeking to regulate the transport and display of plasticized bodies, have passed laws requiring museums to seek special permits before transporting or displaying human bodies.

The issue that trumps all others, though, is whether the bodies have even been appropriately obtained.

Carnegie officials and Kansas City Union Station officials said they were comfortable with Premier Exhibitions’ claims that its “Bodies Revealed” exhibit is peopled with consenting donors.

“One of the reasons why we got excited was when Premier said, ‘We have a show called “Bodies Revealed” that is actually donated bodies,’ ” said Andi Udris, president and CEO of Union Station Kansas City, Inc. “They have stated the other exhibit uses unclaimed bodies, but our exhibit does not use them.”

But controversy raged anew in February when ABC News reported on “20/20” that a Chinese black market might be selling unidentified bodies for $200 to $300 to Dalian Medi-Uni Plastination Labs in Dalian, China. There was some unconfirmed evidence, ABC reported, that the bodies might have been executed prisoners.

The report sparked an investigation by the state of New York directly targeting Premier Exhibitions. The New York attorney general and Premier eventually settled the case, by requiring the exhibitor to warn customers that the bodies may be those of people who were tortured and executed. The education coordinator at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Elaine Catz, resigned citing religious objections to the displays and concerns about the bodies’ origins. Catz, now engaged in virtual protest on a Web site, said the report supported “reasonable doubt about where the bodies are from.”

The report prompted Udris to post a response on the Union Station Web site distinguishing the ‘Bodies Revealed’ exhibit from the other Premier Exhibitions show, “Bodies ... The Exhibition.”

“Premier Exhibitions has now, and always, assured Union Station that all of the bodies and organ specimens on display in ‘Bodies Revealed’ were procured from individuals who willingly and knowingly chose to donate their bodies to science,” Udris wrote. “Those individuals made their anatomical gifts to accredited medical universities in the People’s Republic of China, and all specimens were then received by the Nanjing Suyi Plastination Laboratories in Nanjing, China. Premier Exhibitions contracts with the laboratory to present the educational and inspiring ‘Bodies Revealed’ exhibition to audiences worldwide.”

Jack Smith, editor of the Catholic Key in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, is still pursuing the legitimacy of this claim. In a report he was preparing for an upcoming issue, Smith says legal counsel from Premier admitted that the exhibition company itself possesses no consent forms. They are relying, instead, on an affidavit from the plastination lab, which states the bodies are donated.

Others too remain doubtful. California assemblywoman Fiona Ma, a Chinese American, told the Los Angeles Times that personal experience leads her to question legitimacy claims. “Chinese people are very superstitious about death,” she said. “They don’t believe in organ donations.” So Ma is shepherding a bill through the California Assembly that would require proof of prior consent from persons whose bodies are displayed. Rep. Todd Akins, R-Mo., has introduced a bill in the House that would ban importation of plastinated bodies.

Udris says he has seen a consent form, but not one specifically signed and connected to a displayed figure. While he agrees that demonstrating consent of individual models would quell the primary controversy, he wonders what would really constitute proof.

“Is there really any level of documentation that, if someone didn’t believe, would prove it to them?” he asked. “Even now, when it’s admitted that bodies in other exhibits are unclaimed, it’s assumed they are political prisoners. But it’s just common math. The number of political prisoners doesn’t even come close to the number of people who just die of natural causes.”

The church and anatomy

Solving the donation controversy is unlikely to end the debate, according to John Lantos, who holds the John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics here. The church has long dealt with questions about using cadavers for research and education, he said.

Visitors look at a plastinated body at a “Bodies Revealed” exhibition.“Go back to the great Italian medical schools in the 1300s. The church has faced questions before about proper and improper use of corpses in terms of research and autopsies for diagnosis and even questions about saints, who had their bodies chopped into little pieces. Some paradigms have evolved for what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. A lot of it reflects ambiguity about what sort of thing a corpse is. What has evolved is a gold standard that says the best way is to have people donate their bodies.”

Accordingly, Finn and Naumann’s letter states, “the church does allow for -- and in some cases commends -- the conscientious free choice of persons to ‘donate’ their bodies for legitimate scientific research and educational purposes. In these instances, the deceased body and its parts deserve respectful interment.”

What’s different about these exhibits, Lantos said, is that while they may have educational value, the bodies are not being used for scientific research. People have argued about the degree to which the exhibits may have educational value or are primarily sensational, he said. “It may be that’s what drove the bishops to issue their caution.”

Not all Catholic protests begin and end in chanceries. Kansas City-area members of a Hanover, Pa.-based organization called Tradition, Family and Property protested outside of Union Station soon after the exhibit opened. The group’s vice president, John Horvat II, explained his objections in a column on Spero News, a Web site that covers religion news: “When mutilated, flayed and cut-away bodies are turned into specimens to be gawked at in traveling shows, it is an implicit denial of the Resurrection and our own resurrection,” he said.

Mark Lazaroski, board president of the Catholic Cemetery Conference, says the primary burial issue that might be at work here is the matter of keeping the body together.

“You don’t want pieces of the body here and there,” said Lazaroski, director of cemeteries for the Syracuse, N.Y., diocese. “Reverence of the body means that division is not accepted.”

Deacon as docent

In Kansas City’s Union Station, Catholics have hardly been absent from the exhibit floor. The most popular docent, according to high school principal Palmer (a Catholic who has read the bishops’ statement) was Don McCandless, a permanent deacon of the Catholic church.

McCandless, who recently retired as a full-time pharmacology professor at the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, said he took the bishops’ statement seriously. But he added that his firsthand observation of the exhibit’s impact compels him -- as it does Palmer -- to respectfully disagree.

“I’ve seen a tremendous interest; I haven’t seen any disrespect,” McCandless said. “People see what happens to lungs when you smoke, what happens to the body if you overeat. People who have rotator cuff surgeries want to see that. They are learning one heck of a lot about the human body and how it fits together. This can spark interest in young minds, who might go on to a medical or scientific field of study. And we need that today.”

McCandless is no stranger to the concept of donated bodies. The university where he taught uses donated bodies for study, and at the end of the year, the school conducts a funeral to which family members of the deceased are invited.

“It’s a very reverent and meaningful service, because those bodies are helping these students learn how to save other people’s lives,” McCandless said. “I think the bishops understand that, they say so in their statement. But I think if this exhibit can encourage even more people to head in that direction, it serves a similar purpose.”

Michael Humphrey is a freelance writer in Kansas City, Mo.

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Bodies on the Web

To find out whether an exhibit of plastinated bodies will be coming to your city soon, check out Gunther von Hagen’s Web site, www.bodyworlds.com, or the Web site for Premier Exhibitions, www.prxi.com.

On von Hagen’s Web site you can find a scientific overview of the plastination process and a place to download consent forms for people wishing to donate their bodies for plastination.

The Premier Exhibitions site, in a section titled “Press Releases,” contains an open letter to “20/20,” defending the company’s practices against allegations aired on “20/20.”

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia reviews the process of plastination and the history of the exhibits and gives the ethical concerns, as well as suggestions for further reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastina tion.

A brief summary of the controversy can be found at www.wisegeek.com/what-is-body-worlds. It ends on a positive note: “Body Worlds” is “a fascinating and informative exhibit ... a must for anyone interested in anatomy or medicine,” the author writes.

Another basically positive report is at parentdish.com, a Web site for parents, where an exhibit-goer wrote: “ ‘Body World’ exhibit in Philadelphia is educational and a little gross.” The post can be found by searching for “Body World.”

An alternative view can be found at Dignity in Boston, a Web site whose sponsors aim to stop the exhibits. The site provides links to numerous articles and blogs: dignityinboston.googlepages.com.

Blogger Makina Canada, who describes herself as a human rights activist with a focus on the rights of Chinese people living under communism, gives her reasons for opposing the body exhibitions in a June 27, 2007, post titled “Exhibitions of Ex ploitation”: ahdu88.blogspot.com. Her blog is called “Between Heaven and Earth.”

National Catholic Reporter June 27, 2008