Tuesday, July 11, 2006
I'd like to see this (but not participate in it):
Traveling cadaver show wants you - Body exhibit seeks donors in Boston 
He hopes to add to that list when his traveling show reaches Boston later this month.
``Think of it as an alternative to being eaten by worms or going up in smoke," von Hagens said by phone from his Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany.
A donor might wind up as an exotic medical specimen (sliced, for example, into 1-millimeter-thick translucent body ``sheets") or as a featured whole-body exhibit in his occasionally condemned but wildly popular road show, Body Worlds 2, which opens July 30 at the Museum of Science in Boston.
``My aim is to illuminate and educate through the beautiful arrangement" of bodies, he said. The 61-year-old physician, university lecturer, and anatomist-cum-artist's exhibitions of plasticized, partially dissected bodies -- an expectant mother cross-sectioned to reveal her unborn child, a man peeled to his musculature, carrying his skin like an old raincoat -- hover somewhere between the sublime and the unspeakable.
The Body Worlds exhibitions have attracted more than 18 million visitors on three continents and grossed an estimated $200 million, according to organizers. They also have been controversial: Police and prosecutors in at least four countries have investigated allegations -- none proven -- that von Hagens has purchased cadavers from grave robbers, prison wardens, bribed medical examiners, and other unsavory purveyors...
Reminds me of the body viewing software I posted about way back in this post: The yearning to gaze outward...and inward...
Bodyworlds fails to give the deceased the dignity and respect that we are all entitled to. Please visit my website to get more information about why this exhibit is a bad idea, and should be banned in Boston. The exhibit is about money and show business, and the lack of dignity totally overides any educational value. I hope you will help me to stop the appearance of the exhibit in Boston. The web site is at
http://homepage.mac.com/readers/dignityinboston/dignityinboston.html
Aaron Ginsburg
Sharon, MA
Uh, I don't think it's true that the allegations that these corpses were obtained unlawfully was unproven. Do a little more research before you give visitors that false impression. If you're not willing to have this done to you or a loved one, than gee, author, maybe you shouldn't be financing this and going for a cheap thrill. If you are really interested in anatomy or something like the exhibit's supporters and enthusiasts always claim, there is nothing that couldn't be gained from anatomy books or plastic models in a much more respectful and less disturbing manner.
I doubt very much that the pregnant mother would have been happy for her body, featuring her unborn child to have been displayed for the morbidly curious to gawp at.
As for said unborn child, it DID not give its consent. Thats a fact.
Death should not be a money making scam, these exhibitions are sick and unethical.
Have any of you gone to see the show so you know what you are actually talking about?