Body Worlds is a fascinating traveling anatomical exhibition of preserved human bodies. It is currently at St. Paul’s Science Museum of Minnesota, the largest exhibit hosted there and at Houston’s Museum of Nature & Science. Both shows run through Labor day. Body Worlds has been all over the world. In the U.S., it has been to Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and just recently at the Franklin Science Institute in Philadelphia and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It will be at the Boston Museum of Science starting July 30th.
Entire human bodies, including soft tissue, muscles, organs, and blood vessels are preserved by a process called Plastination, invented by Gunther von Hagens. The exhibit of 200 bodies and body parts gets rave reviews. In fact, people love it so much, they want to be IN IT and there is a waiting list of donors. So if you want to discover what makes you tick, visit Body Worlds. (Interesting fact–the brain stops growing when you reach about 15.)
Once considered controversial because of the use of real human beings, who may or may not have given their consent, and a few bodies found disturbing to some, such as the Pregnant Woman (image here), Body Worlds has spawned imitators and with it lawsuits.
Watch a video of visitors to Body Worlds.
Official Body Worlds website.
This is some sick sick shiet. This is the kind of crap that causes serial killers. This was probably made by one. Are we really that desensitized that such a scene is created solely for the sake of entertainment?
Lets be honest, the majority of these bodies are taken without consent. They came from the Chinese government, getting rid of their political enemies, and prisoners. It’s bad enough wealthy foreigners come in and buy organs for transplants in this method. But now whole bodies being sacrificed?
We may squirm at the mention of ancient civilizations such as the Mayans, the Toltecs, The Aztecs, and such for their inhumane rituals of human sacrifice. This is worse, this is to desensitize us to grotesquely mutilated bodies. This is for profit.
Go To Hell, or whichever God you worship, it will not matter, he or she will not forgive you.
If these are Chinese dissidents I strongly agree with you. But supposedly the people have consented and they claim to have a waiting list of donors. Once the person does, I believe their soul leaves the body. Doctors (and students studying medicine) have used dead bodies to help improve medical science. I think that is a good thing. Exhibiting bodies may be educational or not, I don’t know. But maybe a smoker who actually sees how smoking destroys the body may quit. In such a case the saving of a single life I think might be enough to justify the exhibit.
Thank you for your comment Keep it Real.
This is for Keep it Real’s comment.
I stongly disagree with you on your comment. You should reserch the exhibit befor spilling you thoughts. I would love to be a doner myself simply because I love science and I am in love with the human body itself! I believe we need to know how our body works and let other people experience that too by viewing these wonderful speciments. I don’t know where you got that information about these bodis coming from Chinese, but if you reserched the exhibit like I mentioned earlier, some of them come from Texas! And they were all donors too! But overall having this exhibit in town is just great because it’s giving us a chance to see how wonderful our bodies are and how they work to better ourself in taking care of our body.
I must admit that I was shocked when I first saw pictures of these exhibits. Now however, after contemplating the reasons for my initial reaction, I cannot wait to get tickets and go. I think the reason we shy from this type of thing is that it is a stark reminder of our own mortality. I think it will be a fantastic opportunity to study the amazing universe of the human body. This technology gives us the ability to see things we would never have the chance to otherwise.
Medical history has proven that this type of education is responsible for the vast majority of our medical advancements. Medical students learn on cadavers. In the dark ages, experimenting on corpses was thought to be evil. ‘Keep it Real,’ you sound just like the inquisition must have. Let’s be honest, you probably would not be alive today without the medical advances we enjoy from the freedom to study the human body. I wonder what the God you worship would say about the way you are treating the living… for the sake of your opinions about the dead?
I couldn’t wait to go and see this exhibit. I went to the one in Rochester-I took my entire family with me, as I am a science teacher. My 11 year old daughter and I walked through together with me as a narrator for what we were looking at. It was amazingly educational! I only wish that I could have gotten my principal to say yes to taking my 7th graders to view this exhibit. I did not find the exhibit to be appauling at all. I felt that there was an air of reverance in the room as numbers of people walked through to view the exhibits. I did not hear one negative comment. I strongly urge anyone who wants to learn about the workings of the human body to see this exhibit-it is truely amazing. To those who donated their bodies for this process-THANK YOU!!!!