Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste
By ANDREW JACOBS, The New York Times
(Nov. 18) - The jaunty fellow with the conductor's baton waving in one hand stands on a pedestal seemingly lost in the music. But there are a few startlingly odd things about this tall, lithe gentleman: He is dead, his skin has been methodically ripped away and there is a pinkish void where his viscera are supposed to be. Besides a few supporting segments of muscle, bone and ligament, the man has been rendered into a web of white spindly nerves.
Critics question the whether the bodies in the exhibit are those of executed Chinese prisoners. The company running the exhibit says the bodies were poor, unclaimed or unidentified.
It is impossible to know what he did in life, but in death the man has become a ghoulish show-and-tell exemplar of the human nervous system, part of a new exhibit that opens tomorrow at the South Street Seaport. The show, called "Bodies . . . the Exhibition," features the preserved remains of 22 people and 260 other specimens, including a set of conjoined fetuses, a set of male genitalia, a pudgy woman who has been vertically sliced into four equal segments and a sprinter whose flayed muscles fly around him like slices of prosciutto.
While the notion of displaying the dead for profit is bound to provoke controversy, some critics say this particular show, which relies entirely on cadavers from China, is more troubling than those sponsored by other companies that have gotten into the macabre business of anatomical exhibitions. Citing the Chinese government's poor human rights record and the medical establishment's practice of recycling the organs of executed prisoners, medical ethicists and human rights advocates are questioning whether the show's specimens were legally obtained.
"Given the government's track record on the treatment of prisoners, I find this exhibit deeply problematic," said Sharon Hom, the executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China.
Arnie Geller, the president of Premier Exhibitions Inc., the company that spent $25 million to obtain the specimens from a Chinese university, insists that the human remains, all but two of them male, are those of the poor, the unclaimed or the unidentified. Although he said he was not allowed to keep copies of documents, officials at Dalian University in northern China showed him papers attesting to the origin of the remains. The documents were kept confidential, Mr. Geller said, because international law forbids public disclosure of the identities of those who have donated their bodies to medical science.
"I am certain that all these specimens were legally obtained," he said.
But Harry Wu, the executive director of the LaoGai Research Foundation, an organization that documents abuses in China's penal system, said officials from Dalian University had been previously implicated in the use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes, having supplied bodies to Gunter von Hagens, the German entrepreneur who started the first traveling show of the dead, "World of Bodies." Dr. Sui Hongjin, who was previously Mr. Von Hagen's Chinese partner until a falling out three years ago, is now working with Premier Exhibitions, which has its headquarters in Atlanta.
"Considering that China executes between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners a year and their long history of freely using death row prisoners for medical purposes, you have to wonder," Mr. Wu said, adding that he would pursue legal steps in this country to ensure that the show was not using illegally obtained bodies. "In China, a piece of paper means nothing."
If the past is any guide, such controversy coupled with public hand-wringing over the show's ghastliness is fully expected, even welcomed, by its sponsors. A publicly traded company that has prospered by exhibiting relics from the Titanic, Premier is clearly hoping news coverage will help draw enough people, at $24.50 for adults and $18.50 for children, to earn back its sizable investment.
The show, which has taken over the second floor of a building once occupied by fishmongers, is scheduled to run for at least six months, although organizers are hoping public interest will lead to a 12-month extension. This is the first time such an exhibition has come to New York.
A smaller show the company organized last summer in Tampa, Fla., provoked condemnation from religious leaders, a state medical board and the state attorney general (who could not find a reason to shut it down). That exhibition has been drawing huge crowds.
Playing down the sensationalism, Premier executives use the word "specimen" to describe the exhibits and emphasize their value as educational tools that can teach children about human physiology and help adults learn how to lead healthier lives. Dr. Roy Glover, a retired anatomy professor who is the company's medical adviser, makes a point of showing off a set of lungs blackened by smoking and a brain damaged by a stroke. The exhibit's explanatory text, written by Dr. Glover, counsels against obesity, steroid use and inactivity.
"This is not a freak show," Dr. Glover said, standing beside the musculature of a man who is holding hands with his own removed skeleton. "People go away fascinated by what they've seen, and they're better educated about their bodies."
By ANDREW JACOBS, The New York Times
(Nov. 18) - The jaunty fellow with the conductor's baton waving in one hand stands on a pedestal seemingly lost in the music. But there are a few startlingly odd things about this tall, lithe gentleman: He is dead, his skin has been methodically ripped away and there is a pinkish void where his viscera are supposed to be. Besides a few supporting segments of muscle, bone and ligament, the man has been rendered into a web of white spindly nerves.
Critics question the whether the bodies in the exhibit are those of executed Chinese prisoners. The company running the exhibit says the bodies were poor, unclaimed or unidentified.
It is impossible to know what he did in life, but in death the man has become a ghoulish show-and-tell exemplar of the human nervous system, part of a new exhibit that opens tomorrow at the South Street Seaport. The show, called "Bodies . . . the Exhibition," features the preserved remains of 22 people and 260 other specimens, including a set of conjoined fetuses, a set of male genitalia, a pudgy woman who has been vertically sliced into four equal segments and a sprinter whose flayed muscles fly around him like slices of prosciutto.
While the notion of displaying the dead for profit is bound to provoke controversy, some critics say this particular show, which relies entirely on cadavers from China, is more troubling than those sponsored by other companies that have gotten into the macabre business of anatomical exhibitions. Citing the Chinese government's poor human rights record and the medical establishment's practice of recycling the organs of executed prisoners, medical ethicists and human rights advocates are questioning whether the show's specimens were legally obtained.
"Given the government's track record on the treatment of prisoners, I find this exhibit deeply problematic," said Sharon Hom, the executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China.
Arnie Geller, the president of Premier Exhibitions Inc., the company that spent $25 million to obtain the specimens from a Chinese university, insists that the human remains, all but two of them male, are those of the poor, the unclaimed or the unidentified. Although he said he was not allowed to keep copies of documents, officials at Dalian University in northern China showed him papers attesting to the origin of the remains. The documents were kept confidential, Mr. Geller said, because international law forbids public disclosure of the identities of those who have donated their bodies to medical science.
"I am certain that all these specimens were legally obtained," he said.
But Harry Wu, the executive director of the LaoGai Research Foundation, an organization that documents abuses in China's penal system, said officials from Dalian University had been previously implicated in the use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes, having supplied bodies to Gunter von Hagens, the German entrepreneur who started the first traveling show of the dead, "World of Bodies." Dr. Sui Hongjin, who was previously Mr. Von Hagen's Chinese partner until a falling out three years ago, is now working with Premier Exhibitions, which has its headquarters in Atlanta.
"Considering that China executes between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners a year and their long history of freely using death row prisoners for medical purposes, you have to wonder," Mr. Wu said, adding that he would pursue legal steps in this country to ensure that the show was not using illegally obtained bodies. "In China, a piece of paper means nothing."
If the past is any guide, such controversy coupled with public hand-wringing over the show's ghastliness is fully expected, even welcomed, by its sponsors. A publicly traded company that has prospered by exhibiting relics from the Titanic, Premier is clearly hoping news coverage will help draw enough people, at $24.50 for adults and $18.50 for children, to earn back its sizable investment.
The show, which has taken over the second floor of a building once occupied by fishmongers, is scheduled to run for at least six months, although organizers are hoping public interest will lead to a 12-month extension. This is the first time such an exhibition has come to New York.
A smaller show the company organized last summer in Tampa, Fla., provoked condemnation from religious leaders, a state medical board and the state attorney general (who could not find a reason to shut it down). That exhibition has been drawing huge crowds.
Playing down the sensationalism, Premier executives use the word "specimen" to describe the exhibits and emphasize their value as educational tools that can teach children about human physiology and help adults learn how to lead healthier lives. Dr. Roy Glover, a retired anatomy professor who is the company's medical adviser, makes a point of showing off a set of lungs blackened by smoking and a brain damaged by a stroke. The exhibit's explanatory text, written by Dr. Glover, counsels against obesity, steroid use and inactivity.
"This is not a freak show," Dr. Glover said, standing beside the musculature of a man who is holding hands with his own removed skeleton. "People go away fascinated by what they've seen, and they're better educated about their bodies."
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