An exhibition of "plasticized" preserved human cadavers is causing a stir. See:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/07/02/body.exhibit.ap/index.html
http://www.koerperwelten.de/en/pages/home.asp
QUOTES:
. . . "Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies," which makes its U.S. debut Friday at the California Science Center.
Intended to teach people about human skeletal, cardiovascular and other systems, the final exhibit includes 25 bodies that have undergone a process called "plastination" in which body fluids are replaced with clear, pliable plastic.
Most have been skinned or dissected to reveal muscles, bones, nerves and organs. Some show damage done by illnesses such as cancer and lung disease.
Since debuting in Tokyo in 1996, the show has aroused controversy as well as curiosity.
Its shocking display of flesh and bones has offended many observers who claim it violates the sanctity of the human body. . . .
Things like this separate the men from the boys. People who favor this kind of show truly, firmly, unequivocally believe that knowledge is more important than traditional beliefs about the sanctity of the body, or notions about man's special place in the cosmos. As for me, I am squeamish, and in practice I would probably be grossed out by the sight of an actual preserved pregnant woman's cadaver. But in principle I am 100% in favor of people seeing such things, if they want to, because it will advance their knowledge of biology. It teaches people cool objectivity in the face of death and disease, which is an excellent thing.
We must make a critical distinction, however. Biologists and scientists in general should never turn away from examining harsh reality, including death, cruelty, sexual perversion, the effects of disease, crime, asteroids whacking into planets, endangered species, etc., etc. There can be no bounds set to passive, fact-finding research. But, that does not mean researchers themselves should be given a green light to engage in heinous behavior. They should not conduct cruel experiments, torture people or animals, or deliberately go around exterminating species to find out what happens. They should not root around the graveyards of people with relatives still living. Until the mid 1970s there was not enough oversight of laboratory biology, and far too much gratuitous cruelty. In medicine and social science this attitude led to infamous incidents such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and Yale's Milgram experiment in which people thought they were electrically shocking other volunteer test subjects. (The "victims" were actors and the shocks were fake, but the test subjects who thought they were shocking people were traumatized, even though they went ahead and did it. I like to think that if they had hired me as a test subject, I would have stopped immediately and called the police . . . but who knows.) In physics, thousands of people were deliberately exposed to aboveground nuclear explosions. Being objective does not mean being inhuman, or unethical.
There are some borderline cases, such as recent laws that force U.S. museums to return native American skeletons to their tribes for burial. Given the cruel history of native Americans, this seems like a sensible compromise to me, although it is absurd to apply the rule to fossilized specimens that are hundreds of thousands of years old. By the same token, I would not want to see someone's body used in the "Body World" exhibit without their permission. That would be horrible!
- Jed
