Seriously, I'm going, let me know if you are interested in joining me - I will go alone if I have to.
Toronto exhibit to feature cadavers, body parts
By MICHAEL POSNER
Friday, June 24, 2005 Updated at 5:26 AM EDT
From Friday's Globe and Mail
A hugely popular but controversial exhibit of human bodies that critics have called macabre, offensive and a commercialization of death is coming to Canada.
Body Worlds 2, which features some 200 plastinated cadavers and body parts, will run at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto from Sept. 30 until Feb. 26, 2006. Science Centre officials will make a formal announcement this morning.
Plastination, invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in 1978, is a process that replaces water and other fluids with plastic, preserving dead tissue indefinitely without odour.
In the past decade, more than 17 million people around the world have seen the show and its predecessor, Body Worlds 1. In several cities, museums and science centres presenting the display were forced to extend viewing hours to accommodate the demand.
But the exhibit has also drawn sharp criticism on several fronts.
Some observers label it a high-tech freak show.
A hugely popular but controversial exhibit of human bodies that critics have called macabre, offensive and a commercialization of death is coming to Canada.
Body Worlds 2, which features some 200 plastinated cadavers and body parts, will run at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto from Sept. 30 until Feb. 26, 2006. Science Centre officials will make a formal announcement this morning.
Plastination, invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in 1978, is a process that replaces water and other fluids with plastic, preserving dead tissue indefinitely without odour.
In the past decade, more than 17 million people around the world have seen the show and its predecessor, Body Worlds 1. In several cities, museums and science centres presenting the display were forced to extend viewing hours to accommodate the demand.
But the exhibit has also drawn sharp criticism on several fronts.
Some observers label it a high-tech freak show.
When it travelled in Europe and Asia, religious leaders condemned it as "trampling on the human rights" of the dead and they demanded that the plastinated corpses be buried.
When the show was exhibited in Edinburgh two years ago, a Scottish parliamentarian accused Dr. von Hagens of crass self-promotion.
"This is someone who is trying to capitalize on horror," Conservative Phil Gallie said. ". . . Human beings should be respected in every stage of life and death."
But when the show came to Los Angeles this year, one commentator said it fills a void in a violent world.
"Americans have been remarkably shielded from the most visceral imagery generated by 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, which has been printed and broadcast elsewhere," David Skal, a scholar of horror, told the Associated Press.
"People are being torn apart daily, but the only places to bear witness seem to be exhibits like Body Worlds and splatter movies."
Medical ethicists have decried the exhibit as a crass, commercial exploitation of the human body. Nevertheless, the Body Worlds shows are reported to have grossed about $200-million worldwide.
Others have questioned the provenance of the bodies. This week, a court in Novosibirsk fined a Russian medical examiner the equivalent of $1,850 for illegally shipping 56 corpses to Dr. von Hagens's plastination facility in Heidelberg, Germany, four years ago.
Dr. von Hagens insists -- and organizations working with him have confirmed -- that he works only with the consent of body donors or their families.
Body Worlds has been plagued by unauthorized copycat exhibitions that have used improperly plastinated specimens. In one such show in San Francisco this month, several corpses on display began to leak original body fluids.
Dr. von Hagens's show features more than 20 full body specimens, stripped of skin and set in a variety of arresting poses, including figure skaters, a baseball player, a skateboarder and a chess player. Viewers see every organ, muscle, nerve and ligament.
Designed to teach people what has long been the preserve of medical science, the show allows viewers to compare a healthy lung, liver or heart to diseased organs of the same kind. It includes a five-week-old fetus as well as cross-sectional body slices frozen in transparent resin that indicate how fat affects organs.
"After a few of us [saw] Body Worlds in Los Angeles last July, we concluded that it was important to bring this exhibition to Toronto," Lesley Lewis, CEO of the Ontario Science Centre, said. "[It's] a compelling experience that will give visitors a new perspective on their body and the importance of healthy lifestyle choices."
By MICHAEL POSNER
Friday, June 24, 2005 Updated at 5:26 AM EDT
From Friday's Globe and Mail
A hugely popular but controversial exhibit of human bodies that critics have called macabre, offensive and a commercialization of death is coming to Canada.
Body Worlds 2, which features some 200 plastinated cadavers and body parts, will run at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto from Sept. 30 until Feb. 26, 2006. Science Centre officials will make a formal announcement this morning.
Plastination, invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in 1978, is a process that replaces water and other fluids with plastic, preserving dead tissue indefinitely without odour.
In the past decade, more than 17 million people around the world have seen the show and its predecessor, Body Worlds 1. In several cities, museums and science centres presenting the display were forced to extend viewing hours to accommodate the demand.
But the exhibit has also drawn sharp criticism on several fronts.
Some observers label it a high-tech freak show.
A hugely popular but controversial exhibit of human bodies that critics have called macabre, offensive and a commercialization of death is coming to Canada.
Body Worlds 2, which features some 200 plastinated cadavers and body parts, will run at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto from Sept. 30 until Feb. 26, 2006. Science Centre officials will make a formal announcement this morning.
Plastination, invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in 1978, is a process that replaces water and other fluids with plastic, preserving dead tissue indefinitely without odour.
In the past decade, more than 17 million people around the world have seen the show and its predecessor, Body Worlds 1. In several cities, museums and science centres presenting the display were forced to extend viewing hours to accommodate the demand.
But the exhibit has also drawn sharp criticism on several fronts.
Some observers label it a high-tech freak show.
When it travelled in Europe and Asia, religious leaders condemned it as "trampling on the human rights" of the dead and they demanded that the plastinated corpses be buried.
When the show was exhibited in Edinburgh two years ago, a Scottish parliamentarian accused Dr. von Hagens of crass self-promotion.
"This is someone who is trying to capitalize on horror," Conservative Phil Gallie said. ". . . Human beings should be respected in every stage of life and death."
But when the show came to Los Angeles this year, one commentator said it fills a void in a violent world.
"Americans have been remarkably shielded from the most visceral imagery generated by 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, which has been printed and broadcast elsewhere," David Skal, a scholar of horror, told the Associated Press.
"People are being torn apart daily, but the only places to bear witness seem to be exhibits like Body Worlds and splatter movies."
Medical ethicists have decried the exhibit as a crass, commercial exploitation of the human body. Nevertheless, the Body Worlds shows are reported to have grossed about $200-million worldwide.
Others have questioned the provenance of the bodies. This week, a court in Novosibirsk fined a Russian medical examiner the equivalent of $1,850 for illegally shipping 56 corpses to Dr. von Hagens's plastination facility in Heidelberg, Germany, four years ago.
Dr. von Hagens insists -- and organizations working with him have confirmed -- that he works only with the consent of body donors or their families.
Body Worlds has been plagued by unauthorized copycat exhibitions that have used improperly plastinated specimens. In one such show in San Francisco this month, several corpses on display began to leak original body fluids.
Dr. von Hagens's show features more than 20 full body specimens, stripped of skin and set in a variety of arresting poses, including figure skaters, a baseball player, a skateboarder and a chess player. Viewers see every organ, muscle, nerve and ligament.
Designed to teach people what has long been the preserve of medical science, the show allows viewers to compare a healthy lung, liver or heart to diseased organs of the same kind. It includes a five-week-old fetus as well as cross-sectional body slices frozen in transparent resin that indicate how fat affects organs.
"After a few of us [saw] Body Worlds in Los Angeles last July, we concluded that it was important to bring this exhibition to Toronto," Lesley Lewis, CEO of the Ontario Science Centre, said. "[It's] a compelling experience that will give visitors a new perspective on their body and the importance of healthy lifestyle choices."
5 comments:
Be sure to click the link and have a look at the picture that accompanies the article, it's awesome.
it's not awesome, it's gross. and it's likely illegal. and if it's not illegal it probably should be.
well then I'll be sure to go sooner rather than later in case they get shut down.
A friend saw this exhibit in California (or one just like it) and suddenly realised that the bodies probably were executed prisoners, and that the pointing and giggling was too much to bear. I agree with Paul.
I'm not overly concerned about the ethics of the whole situation. If I was concerned about those sorts of things I'd probably not have taken all of those anatomy classes at university where you use a collection of skeletons purchased by the university from Indian families in the 1970s. I understand that the Hindus souls can't get wherever it is they go after death without a cremation. Also I'd probably not volunteer in a museum which has dead stuff and dead people everywhere including, I understand, the contents of an entire native burial ground that their descendents are trying to get back through the courts and rebury.
Part of me is reminded of some of those stories you hear about native people being put in zoos and held at universities for study, entire burial grounds being dug up catalogued and held for studies at universities and other unethical behaviors. On the other hand I'm also reminded of Leonardo da Vinci doing the first anatomical studies since Galen (the ancient Greek anatomist) and having to resort to digging up bodies to disect them because he wasn't even allowed to use willing participants (people who were willing before they died). There has to be some more effective method for people to control how their body is used after they die and perhaps pay them for the use of their corpse - and that means a non-sketchy way to donate your body to an exhibit like this one. Some people don't mind if their bodies are used for art or research or fed to hyenas or whatever. Obviously it's not great if they don't consent, but let's face it they're dead. If they were executed, then I'd say that killing them was the greater crime. I wouldn't choose to spend eternity in a dorky figure skater pose, but I don't want to be buried right away either. I want to be donated to the body farm so they can use it to study decomposition.
If the people consent to their bodies being used and are maybe even compensated, why shouldn't it be legal aren't we all fighting for the right to control what happens to our bodies when we are alive?
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