Bodies - the Exhibit (Sujatha)

The blurb on the website for the controversial Bodies exhibit  reads :

Celebrate the wonder of the human form in the World Premier of BODIES The Exhibition a phenomenal look at the phenomena we call the human body.

With educational relevance for all ages, this exhibition of real human specimens immerses visitors in the complexities of the human body, telling us the amazing story of ourselves with reverence and understanding.

The town's billboards and buses had been plastered with posters of a body split in half, devoid of the skin and showing the underlying musculature, including a tell tale epicanthic fold below the eye, a reminder of the Mongoloid origins of the person whose body was used. Then the paper wars started over "To see or not to see " the exhibit. Everyone from the general public  to rabbis and pastors chipped in with their letters to the editor and op-eds.

As members of the science center, we were sent special invitations to opening night, which intensified my apathy at the rush to see the exhibit.We finally did go over the Thanksgiving break, with my two children (ages 13 and 7) in tow. It was a remarkable experience in more ways than I anticipated.

There had been been a great deal of publicity preceding the opening of this exhibit, ever since it started touring the world since 2005, fueled by a controversy over the sources of the cadavers used in the exhibit (very likely, executed prisoners from China). Locally, it had led to the resignation of a science educator at the science center where the exhibit was due to start. In an op-ed piece, she laid out the reasons for her objection and resignation:

"It teaches that it is incredibly easy to dehumanize others. Many exhibit visitors say that after a few minutes, they become so fascinated by the subject matter that they forget they're looking at real people. But when we dehumanize the dead, it becomes easier to dehumanize the living.

Every death, whatever the cause, is that of a human being who wished, in life, to be treated with respect. If we wish others to respect us, we must demonstrate respect for the humanity of all people, and of their memories and bodies after death."

Ouch! According to Ms.Catz, no evidence of 'reverence and understanding' claimed in the blurb was there. But I suspect that her perceptions might have been shaped by a cultural/religious orientation that views the human body in all forms alive or dead as not to be defiled or mutilated in any form, to be interred properly, perhaps for resurrection in bodily form.

In my case, I've been conditioned by my culture/religion/youthful experience to view a dead body as just something to be put away, whether by cremation/burial/donation to a medical college. While the person lived, it was their outer shell. Once dead, it just became another malodorous decaying thing, dehumanized by the flight of the living element.

I'm no stranger to cadaver and specimen display, having seen many as a child, suspended in their paleness in glass cases of formaldehyde. But these plastinated bodies provided a much clearer view of the musculature and nerves, all without the intervening fluid, making it vastly more instructive and easy to label them.

There were several displays focusing on each organ system, accented here and there by the posed cadavers kicking balls or swinging rackets or sectioned to show the adipose tissue, which in the end, seemed to be a little tangential to the main intent of the exhibit. It struck me that the displayed bodies were the shock-and-awe element to bring out the hordes of the curious, while those who objected (in a minority, anyway), would stay away. The real value of the exhibit was in its close and carefully crafted look at the organs of the body. One display had the delicate tracery of blood vessels that surround the lungs carefully preserved through a method called corrosion casting, another showed the effects of smoking, contrasting a blackened lung of a smoker next to a non-smoker's.

With a special caveat,there was a display of aborted fetuses at various stages, that my daughter insisted on seeing, despite my telling her we could avoid it if she didn't want to see it. "I want to see it", she said, and then marveled at the tiny perfectly formed limbs of a 12 week old fetus "Just like a tiny person!"

"Needs more light, needs more smiles (in the posed cadavers)" went the comment from my 13-year old. "An interesting science exhebit(sic)" went the comment from my 7-year old, as we exited the exhibit.

My unwritten verdict: An exhibit that drives home the marvels of the human body, lent even greater depth and poignancy in the fact that these were unknown people who lived and died, perhaps unjustly- we shall never know for sure.

Comments

[Ruchira]

The plastination of the cadavers was done in China? Is it known if the Chinese government was paid for the exhibitions?

I have the same attitude towards the dead body as you - the effect of a culture which considers the lifeless body as valuable as a discarded piece of clothing. The Hindu practice of cremation and the Parsee custom of laying out dead bodies on Towers of Silence do make one less sentimental about the lifeless human form. But unsentimentality does not mean disrespect and lack of ethics. As you said, respect for the dead body is not so much meant for the dead but a consideration for the living who mourn them.

Any thing that China is involved in, raises ethical concerns. The bodies are supposed to have been "unclaimed" cadavers. Who knows how much pressure may have been put on families to not "claim" them?

Researchers at the University of Hiroshima have developed transparent frogs which may make dissection of live frogs in biology labs obsolete. May be we should strive for the same for the sake of medicine? Or will that be too much like see-through sewer pipes?

[Sujatha]

All that I can find is a couple of references in various articles saying that the Chinese government supplied the cadavers from 'unclaimed' bodies. It's next to impossible to determine whether these are really 'unclaimed' or whether no efforts were made to notify the next-of-kin about these deaths. China also maintains a flourishing organs trade. Although some attempt has been made to regulate it, as per this article, abuses predominate their current system, with practically no 'informed consent' in the removal of organs.
India has her share of the organs trade, but the coercion factor is primarily economic, rather than 'donation' forced by the authorities.

[Anna]

I don't really have a great deal of sentimental attachment to bodies, either, and hope that mine someday, useful organs removed, will be cremated and disposed of as cheaply and conveniently as possible.

But isn't the relevant question, not just whether the bodies were fairly obtained, but how the Chinese whose bodies were taken feel about such things? As to that, I have no idea, not being terribly familiar with Chinese culture, but someone must.

[Joe]

All I know is, I wouldn't want people doing stuff with my body after I die. That's why I'm getting cremated. I don't believe in incorporeal souls, but at least emotionally I do believe that whatever a "person" is, it is coterminous with the body, such that a crime against a dead body feels like a crime against a dead person, rather than something done to a hunk of dead meat which was once inhabited by a person.

But intellectually, you know, it's just decaying meat that was taken. So I wonder if the relevant question isn't how the Chinese whose bodies were taken feel about such things-- they're dead, as far as they're concerned none of this is going on, they can't suffer dignitary harms-- but rather how the people who were connected to and survive them feel about it.

[Sujatha]

Anna,

Regarding beliefs of the Chinese about death/dying/burials etc., I was able to find this link, which while providing insights into how they cope with death of family members as a culture, doesn't really shed any light on how the Chinese authorities were able to 'donate' the cadavers used in the exhibit. The Chinese culture has elaborate rituals and lot of 'showing respect' for the deceased ingrained in their funerary rites, along with offerings made to insure a happy after-life for the deceased soul. They are also generally against organ donation as taking away from the integrity of the dead body. The question arises as to 1. Were the Chinese authorities just taking bodies of executed prisoners who were really unclaimed? 2. Were the families even notified of the deaths? 3.Might the authorities may have deemed this exhibit as an extension of the punishment meted out in life, in a manner weirdly consistent with the Chinese cultural/religious attitude to death and funerals?
We have no answer to these, and are unlikely to find any answers in the near future.

Joe,

You do want something done to your body after death, even if that 'something' is cremation, rather than being dissected and displayed. We at least have the luxury of choice in that matter, more than we can confirm for the Chinese whose bodies were used. They had no say in when they were to die, and once dead, no relatives who came forward/or were allowed to claim them.

Having once been a subject of curiosity for the rare case of full-blown varicella (chicken pox) in an adult, and been surrounded with medical students looking at my lesions, plus having a photograph of my back taken for 'instructional purposes', I know exactly what it feels like as a living human to be 'objectified' in a medical sense. I consented to it because I thought it would be for the greater good, even if I was personally uncomfortable with the invasion of privacy it entailed.

[Anna]

Sujatha,

Whoah, you had chicken pox as an adult? That is exciting-- if rather horrible for you! The specter of adult chicken pox loomed large in my imagination as a child, since we were always told, with an almost mythological intensity, that if we didn't catch chicken pox young (I had it at 7), we ran the risk of terrible complications in contracting it as an adult. Glad you lived to tell the tale!

[Sujatha]

Anna,

The chicken-pox that I had wasn't hugely severe, to me, though it had doctors scratching their heads over the diagnosis. I think I'll describe the whole comedy in an F-n-S post someday- it does seem quite funny in retrospect!

[Caskets]

As someone in the funeral industry I found this exhibit to be fascinating, it really is an awesome display on the complicity of the human body

[Jim]

This is just normal pregnancy related. If you want to see a truly extraordinary pregnancy then go to http://pregnant-man.net

[Cremation Urns]

Loved the exhibit - very educational! Actually getting to see the inside of a human body, and look at the genetic makeup is amazing.

Chad