Body Worlds

Body Worlds (German title: Koerperwelt) is a traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts that are prepared using a technique called plastination to reveal inner anatomical structures. The exhibition's developer and promoter is a German anatomist named Gunther von Hagens, who invented the plastination technique in the late 1970s at the University of Heidelberg. Body Worlds was first presented in Tokyo in 1995. Body Worlds exhibitions have since been hosted by more than 50 museums and venues in North America, Europe, and Asia and It comes back to Berlin this week until August. The exhibitions have received more than 26 million visitors, making them the world's most popular touring attraction. The exhibit states that its purpose and mission is the education of laymen about the human body, leading to better health awareness. All the human plastinates are from people who donated their bodies for plastination via a body donation program. Each Body Worlds exhibition contains approximately 25 full-body plastinates with expanded or selective organs shown in positions that enhance the role of certain systems. More than 200 specimens of real human organs and organ systems are displayed in glass cases, some showing various medical conditions. Some of the specimens, such as the Tai Chi Man demonstrate interventions, and include prosthetics such as artificial hip joints or heart valves. Also featured is a liver with cirrhosis and the lungs of a smoker and non-smoker are placed side by side. A prenatal display features fetuses and embryos, some with congenital disorders. To produce specimens for Body Worlds, von Hagens employs 340 people at five laboratories in three countries, China, Germany and Kyrgyzstan. Each laboratory is categorized by specialty, with the China laboratory focusing on animal specimens. One of the most difficult specimens to create was the giraffe that appears in Body Worlds & The Mirror of Time. The specimen took three years to complete – ten times longer than it takes to prepare a human body. Ten people are required to move the giraffe, because its final weight (like all specimens after plastination) is equal to the original animal. Body Worlds exhibitions have controversy and debate focused on various issues. Religious groups, including representatives of the Catholic Church and some Jewish Rabbishave objected to the display of human remains, stating that it is inconsistent with reverence towards the human body. In 2003, while promoting a display in the Hamburg Museum of Erotica von Hagens announced his intention to create a sex plastinate. In May 2009 he unveiled a plastinate of a couple having sex, intended for a Berlin exhibition. In 2007 The Bishop of Manchester launched a campaign to coincide with the opening of Body Worlds in that city, accusing the exhibitors of being "body snatchers" and "robbing the NHS", arguing that donation of bodies for plastination would deprive the National Health Service of organs for transplant. The site included a government petition calling for "a review of the law regarding the policies and practices of touring shows involving corpses". Consent is a primary focus of discussion. Paul Harris, director of North Carolina's State Board of Funeral Services, has stated, "Somebody at some level of government ought to be able to look at a death certificate, a statement from an embalmer, donation documents... That's a reasonable standard to apply. Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (San Francisco) said, "These displays do have important educational benefits, but using bodies against a person's will is unacceptable". All whole body plastinates exhibited in Body Worlds come from donors who gave informed consent via a unique body donation program. Only adults over eighteen years of age can sign up to the programme. The pre-natal and infant specimens in the exhibitions are obtained from morphological collections previously held by universities and medical institutions. Bodies from deceased persons who did not give consent – such as deceased hospital patients from Kyrgyzstan and executed prisoners from China– have never been used in a Body Worlds exhibition. In January 2004, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that von Hagens had acquired corpses of executed prisoners in China; he countered that he did not know the origin of the bodies, and returned seven disputed cadavers to China . In 2004, von Hagens obtained an injunction against Der Spiegel for making the claims. A commission set up by the California Science Center in Los Angeles in 2004 confirmed von Hagens' commitment to ethical practices, and published its Summary of Ethical Review. The commission matched death certificates and body donation forms, and verified informed legal consent of the bodies in the exhibitions. However, to ensure the privacy and anonymity promised to body donors, von Hagens' Institute for Plastination maintains a firewall between body donors' documentation and finished plastinated bodies. To date, more than 9,000 individuals have pledged to donate their bodies to the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany. Body Worlds has been accused of perpetuating 'conservative' gender representations. This article notes that male plastinates were presented in 'heroic' 'manly' roles, including the The Rearing Horse and Rider , The Muscleman and his Skeleton, The Fencer, The Runner, and The Chess Player, while female plastinates were shown in terms of beauty, passivity or reproduction, such as the Reclining Pregnant Woman, a plastinate whose womb is exposed to show her unborn child in "a pose taken straight from pornographic cliche"; and The Swimmer, "suspended, midair, in the graceful position of a swimmer. This figure also had significant quantities of hair on its head". International trade experts have objected to the way in which bodies for commercial display are imported, because the way their categorization codes (as "art collections") do not require Centers for Disease Control stamps or death certificates, both of which are required for medical cadavers. In an ethical analysis, Thomas Hibbs, professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University, compared cadaver displays to pornography, in that they reduce the subject to "the manipulation of body parts stripped of any larger human significance. As part of that review, bioethicist Hans Martin Sass was sent to Heidelberg to match donor consents with death certificates. Concerns have been expressed about the educational aspects, especially the inclusion of these displays for school field trips. Visitors are not allowed to take pictures, and press photographers are required to sign agreements permitting only a single publication in a defined context, followed by a return of the copyright to von Hagens. Because of a similar agreement applied to sound bites (O-Töne, in German) a German press organization suggested that the press refrain from reporting about the exhibition in Munich in 2003 . The success of Body Worlds has given rise to several copycat shows featuring plastinated cadavers but unlike Body Worlds, none of the copycat exhibitions or their suppliers has a body donation programme.