Exploitation,
art or science?

Memories of 'Visible Man'
Some visitors aren’t searching for an artistic experience but practical knowledge — medical students and massage therapists at the San Francisco exhibit said they were seeking a deeper look at the human body. The shows also can be fascinating to people who fondly remember assembling “Visible Man” model kits as children, or dissecting cats and frogs in biology class.

Such traditions date back centuries.

Skal, who will teach a horror course at the University of Victoria in British Columbia this year based on his book “The Monster Show,” points to the 18th- century European tradition of wax anatomical models, “startlingly realistic” exhibits that reproduced dissected corpses. Wax museums later specialized in reproducing tableaus of murders and executions.

In the United States, exhibits featuring corpses or deformed bodies have long been sold as educational. In the late 1800s, as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was challenging beliefs, traveling freak shows claimed corpses and fetuses in their exhibits were evidence of the “missing link” between humans and animals.

“In America, the body and its functions have always been considered nasty, something to be suppressed or pushed out of consciousness,” Skal said.

Some still recoil from the exhibitions. Perhaps that’s because they’re looking at the shows like horror movies, rather than scientific education, says Lisa Kim, who brought Alyssa and her two other home-schooled daughters to the San Francisco show.

“The portion of people who would be scared is very small compared to people who find it fascinating,” said Kim, 48, clutching an anatomy coloring book.

Strict guidelines
Some ethical experts disagree, saying the shows commercialize death and are unnecessary for scientific education.

“This uses actual human material. Even if someone were to consent to this, it contributes to an objectification of the human body because the bodies are used commercially,” said Carol Taylor, a medical ethicist at Georgetown University. “If you allow this, then what happens afterward? You are turning (bodies) into an artistic creation and using people for something other than themselves.”

In Cleveland and Los Angeles, ethical advisory panels were assembled beforehand to approve the shows. The San Francisco show, which has no immediate plans for a run in another city, met no resistance to the exhibits or an accompanying ad campaign.

Organizers say they followed strict guidelines regarding the donation and use of bodies, but ethicists question that claim. Von Hagens has said that his Institute for Plastination uses corpses from donors who wanted their bodies displayed, and German prosecutors found no evidence to substantiate allegations that he may have used the corpses of executed Chinese prisoners.

The “Body Worlds” shows now promote a donation program — people interested in signing “a declaration of intent” to donate remains must review information detailing what happens to the body in their labs, and how the “plastinates” are used.

Alyssa Kim would gladly tour another corpse exhibit.

“It’s amazing to see things you always wanted to know about the body,” the 9-year-old said. “I’d come here again, and I’d take Daddy.”

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