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Beyond skin deep

Margaret Watters

You've seen the ads, you've seen the press and you know controversy is brewing. Real cadavers. Dissected bodies. Organs framed perfectly in the human skeletal system. All on display in eerie and lifelike positions.

It goes by one word-"Bodies." The exhibition opened Feb. 1 at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal amid excitement, controversy and a whole lot of skin.

The exhibit is operated by the Atlanta-based company Premier Exhibitions, made famous in 2003 for its recovery of Titanic artifacts. Since then, the publicly traded company's exhibits have taken the nation by storm. Bodies has been a huge success for Premier Exhibitions and has opened in museums from Atlanta to Manhattan, N.Y. with portions of the exhibit also shown overseas in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Barcelona, Spain.

According to Morris Tsai, a popular Cincinnati blogger, the $23 admission charge has helped the exhibit earn its position as one of the most profitable exhibits in the country.

Miami University zoology adjunct assistant professor Jill Russell said the emergence of "Bodies" and other similar exhibits showcasing plasticized bodies represent a new trend in museums across the country.

According to Russell, the popularity of such exhibits has erupted in the past five years.

"Until recently, I had never seen this way of preserving bodies although 'Bodies' is not the only exhibit of this type," Russell said. "This kind of exhibit has really just popped up in the last five years."

The exhibit explains the process the bodies go through before they're ready for show. But beware-the process of "plasticization" isn't for the weak-stomached.

According to the Premier Exhibitions Web site, the human specimens are initially preserved in the same manner as standard mortuary practices. Next, the specimen is dissected to display the desired portion of the body. The body is then immersed in acetone to eliminate body water, placed in a silicone bath and sealed in a vacuum chamber. While in the vacuum chamber, the plastic of the silicone is absorbed into every cell and body tissue, preventing decay.

Junior David Yousavich, a zoology and chemistry double major who plans on pursuing medicine, explained the process as similar to fossilization and said he isn't bothered by the process.

"For me, it's easy ... to detach the meaning and see them as plastic models," Yousavich said. "Being premed, we look at things in a clinical sense without a lot of emotion attached. You have to detach conventional morals and reach the benefits of learning. You have to detach the humanity and see it as a learning tool."

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Unlike Yousavich, not everyone is able to separate emotion from education.

Tsai has maintained a "Boycott Bodies the Exhibition Cincinnati" link on his homepage since January. Tsai even addressed the exhibit in his Jan. 38 post, "Bodies: the Exhibition in Cincinnati. Unethical. Bodies shown without consent of the dead" in his blog, "The Journey is the Reward."

According to Tsai's blog, the combined impact of this and an exhibit showcasing artifacts recovered from an early eighteenth century pirate ship will make for the busiest twelve months in the museum center's history.

However, Tsai is bothered by the inhumanity of the exhibit.

To meet customs requirements at the border, the bodies are transported into the United States classified as "plastic models." Russell said this is description completely accurate while Tsai is irritated with the contradiction, seeing the duality in Premier's terminology and advertising for the exhibition.

"They advertise them as real human bodies but on the other hand, they're almost all plastic," Tsai said. "They want it both ways."

The Politics of Making People Plastic

However, the exhibit's hottest controversy is not the exhibition of plasticized bodies but rather their origin. The bodies are all Chinese cadavers, and according to a statement Premier Exhibitions released to The Columbus Dispatch, the bodies are also unclaimed and unidentified bodies.

The use of cadavers without consent has stirred controversy, particularly from religious authorities.

Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati issued a statement Jan. 28 concerning the exhibit.

"Within this framework, the use of bodies for scientific research and educational purposes has long been viewed as permissible provided that the consent of the deceased or the deceased's family has been obtained," Pilarczyk said in his January statement. "The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced and unidentified, is a different matter entirely. It is unseemly and inappropriate."

In his statement, Pilarczyk ordered that no Catholic schoolchildren visit the exhibit.

Like many people, Yousavich first heard of the exhibit's opening in Cincinnati from a newscast debating the archbishop's comments. Yousavich, a resident assistant in Wells Hall, was with a roomful of his residents when he saw the broadcast.

"When we saw the bishop denounce the exhibit, we were all standing around and they thought it was interesting so I organized a trip for my hall and Bishop (Hall) to go see it," Yousavich said.

The trip, originally scheduled for Saturday March 8, was cancelled due to snow and is now rescheduled for April 5.

Yousavich doesn't think students understand why the exhibit is controversial. He explained that many students believe the church is opposed to the premise of the displaying bodies on a whole and many do not understand the complexity of the argument and the political questions involved.

"It's somewhat disturbing that they're unidentified Chinese bodies," Yousavich said. "It comes off that the church is denouncing the exhibit in its entirety."

Sophomore Clare Lugli saw the exhibit in 2005 in Cleveland while still attending an all-girl Catholic high school in Cleveland. Lugli explained that her visit took place before the questions regarding the bodies' origins were raised in the mainstream media.

"I thought they were pretty interesting, but at the time I didn't know the background info (like) where the bodies came from," Lugli said. "If I had known, I probably would have found it a little more disturbing."

To Russell, the philosophical debate seems like a distraction from the educational value of the exhibit.

"From what I understand, they're unclaimed bodies," Russell said. "What better use than for education? If this is going to advance our knowledge of the human body ... I don't have a problem with it. From my perspective, I think this is a brilliant use of something that would have gone to waste."

Yousavich said he expects to see the different anatomical structures and systems. He said he looks forward to the portion of the exhibit that shows the effects smoking or drinking can have on the body.

Lugli said the exhibit showcases a pregnant woman's body, a body conducting an orchestra, a body dancing ballet and a body riding a bike, among others.

For Yousavich and other Miami premed students, the Bodies exhibit will be their first exposure to what they learn in class. According to Russell, students are not authorized to work on cadavers until they reach medical school and Miami does not house any cadavers for student use.

The Bodies' Red Scare

Despite the educational value of the exhibit, others continue to debate the ethics of the "Bodies" exhibit.

St. Mary's Catholic Church head priest Father Jeff Silver, who received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Miami in 1976, said he has made plans to have his body donated to science. Silver said he is not opposed to the principle of the exhibit, but he is bothered that the Chinese people featured did not give their consent. Silver explained that since the bodies are from China, there is a degree of ambiguity concerning their origins.

"It's not always easy to assume that what the Chinese government is saying is what's really happening," Silver said.

Russell agued the bodies' race and nationality are not important, despite the controversy surrounding their Chinese origins and the ways in which the bodies were obtained.

"It doesn't matter what nationality they are, they're all bodies," Russell said. "They're all the same. We're all human."

Tsai believes the question of consent is at the heart of the controversy, equal with the bodies' nationality. Tsai said conflict arises due to the Chinese nationality of the bodies, a country historically known for human rights controversies.

"If you died today, would you volunteer to be stripped of your skin, pumped up with liquid plastic, cut up and posed in a museum display?" Tsai said in his Jan. 28 blog post. "Maybe, yes, maybe no. But at least that would be YOUR choice. By using 'unclaimed and unidentified bodies' Premier Exhibitions, Inc. clearly does not get consent from the dead."

Tsai believes that the public should revert to a sense of collective respect for the dead.

"Is it not our duty as humanity to care for those who are less fortunate?" Tsai wrote. "I think one of the saddest things is to leave this world alone and to have no one to mourn or even to remember you. Instead of giving dignity, respect, or even pity, we've turned these unfortunate souls into museum displays to roam our country for profit as property for their owners."

While Tsai does not believe the Chinese government is passing the bodies onto Premier Exhibitions for a price, he suspects the problem lies with the lower officials.

Even the price of the bodies draws suspicion. According to National Geographic News, the exhibit cost Premier $25 million to produce.

Considering the high price, others are concerned that inappropriate sale of the cadavers could go largely unnoticed.

Yousavich described China as a "vacuum of people," and is bothered that you could lose a person and no one would notice.

"They're mistreated when they're alive and now they're mistreated when they're dead," Yousavich said.

Tsai said he believes this issue of using human bodies for exhibition touches on a larger problem for American society.

"We don't really look at things," Tsai said. "We don't care about living people. We used to care about this kind of thing. China is a country on the other side of the planet. There are issues there like labor. People there make a couple bucks a day, really low wages. We don't care about that. We just want our toaster."

To Tsai, the treatment of the cadavers from the "Bodies" exhibit symbolizes a notion of American materialism. He fears that to the American public, bodies are just another Chinese good.

According to Tsai, the juxtaposition of the exhibit and the controversy opens up the floor for a larger discussion human rights and our nation's definition of morality. To Tsai, the debate will only get hotter as the years advance with scientific discovery and innovation.

"We need to talk about this now," Tsai said.

Russell said she firmly believes that the moral questions distract people from the exhibit's significance and potential contributions to American society.

"What a distraction from the whole purpose of the exhibit," Russell said. "I see both sides but really, I feel sad that this controversy is putting a cloud over the enormous educational purpose of the exhibit."


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