I saw the Bodies the Exhibition in Cincinnati this morning when I visited the Cincinnati Museum Center to film a segment with Fox19 News voicing opposition to the exhibition.  I had not planned on seeing the exhibit at all, but when I arrived at the production van at the Museum Center to meet with a reporter, she wasn’t there. It was raining a little so I decided to seek cover inside. I ended up following an electrical cable through a couple of doors and I suddenly I found myself in the middle of the exhibit.

It was a room eerily quiet only inhabited by the dead.  Around the corner I could hear the sounds of an interview being done so I followed the reporter’s voice into another room.  There she was interviewing Dr. Roy Glover, the chief medical director of the exhibit.  I sat down on a bench next to a gentleman who turned out to be Rodger Pille, Director of Media Relations.  I had popped in a little unexpectedly and unannounced to the Museum personnel, but they didn’t seem to be too startled by my presence.  I was wearing a suit.  I remembered hearing how Martin Luther King jr. always wore suits when protesting.  It shows that you’re serious and that you mean business.

Anyways, some of the exhibit seems more academic, a heart over here, another organ encased in glass over there. Other organs showing different maladies.  This is strongly contrasted with the parts that are meant to be more dramatic and artistic.  Seeing the bodies in poses bothered me a little, especially with all I know about the exhibit and the fact that I was totally alone with the bodies.  However, it was the props that make the exhibit seem undignified to me.  One of the bodies is of a person throwing a baseball.  He’s totally naked, except for a glove and ball.  Looking at it, it just seemed a little over the top, meant more for pointing at than learning from.

After seeing the exhibit, my thoughts still haven’t changed much.  I am firm believer in consent  You need to have a donor that gives explicit informed consent.  But, my feelings in terms of human dignity might have grown a little more.  It isn’t dignified to pose a dead human with a prop.  If medical students were caught doing the same with a cadaver, they’d be kicked out of school.  The intent may have been education, but it has crossed over to exploitation.  And it’s something that I would have rather not seen.

Boycott Bodies the Exhibition Cincinnati

If you’ve ever wanted to become a dissected human exhibit, don’t look to Premier Exhibitions, Inc, the company producing Bodies the Exhibition.  Even though there’s a place for you to sign up at the exhibit, you’re just signing up to donate your body to a university or medical center.

This is directly from Dr. Roy Glover, chief medical director of Premier Exhibitions, Inc. with whom I spoke with today at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

They have no use for those who would willing donate their bodies for this purpose.

If you combine this statement with the idea that some schools have too many bodies, it makes you wonder why they have gone with the “unclaimed bodies” route.

From the BodyWorlds website (the original body show)

There are many people who would like to donate their bodies to medical science after their deaths. One means of doing so is to work with the anatomical institutes of universities. However, such establishments are unable to pass on specimens to other academic institutions in need of such bodies, as costs would be incurred for which they do not want to issue invoices if body donors have not agreed to a sale. In addition, “services” like these are technically not within the declared province of a university in most countries. This situation is particularly awkward, as anatomical institutes frequently have to turn down prospective body donors because they already have more than enough bodies for their own instruction.

If there are ample people who wish to donate bodies to this exhibit, why is Bodies the Exhibition using unclaimed bodies?

I’m reading the FAQ for the Bodies the Exhibition on the museum website.

Where do the specimens come from?
A: All of the specimens in this Exhibition were obtained thorough the Dalian Medical University plastination laboratories in the People’s Republic of China. China has a large and highly competent group of anatomists and dissectors, who are essential to properly preparing these specimens for exhibition and educational purposes.

Will we know who the body specimens are? How did they die?
A: The identity and the cause of death of the anatomical specimens are never revealed to the public. Law requires that only the initial authorized recipient — Dalian Medical University — have this information, and it may not be disclosed to any third party. Premier Exhibitions obtained the bodies from Dalian Medical University, which has established itself as a leader in the process of plastination. Dalian is an internationally recognized medical university that is governed by the World Health Organization.

Notice how the FAQ neatly skirts around the fact that Premier obtains “unclaimed bodies” from the government and uses them without their consent.  Premier will state this when pressed.  The Cincinnati Museum Center isn’t proactive in telling people the whole truth when they visit the exhibit.  This is pretty shady.

I’m surprised at the number of people that believe that these bodies were actually donated bodies.  But it’s not even possible, since Premier Exhibitions does NOT use donated bodies.  They won’t take you even if you want them to.

WCPO Channel 9 News ran a story tonight about the Bodies: the Exhibition controversy.  My sister Janice and I were both interviewed about the issues.  Only a short segment was used of our interviews but I think we got our points across.  It was an interesting experience and I was glad to have the opportunity to get the message out to a large audience. 

However, it might get drowned out by all the TV advertising and billboards the Museum Center has bought.  This is going to be a cash cow for the museum and they’re going to milk it for all its worth.  Then this exhibit moves on to the next unsuspecting city to rake in millions all over again. Sad.

From WCPO.com: Bodies …The Exhibition Draws Criticism (VIDEO)
From WCPO.com: Bodies …The Exhibition Draws Criticism (Story)

I saw this segment of 60 Minutes last night on the sub-prime mortgage crisis and it’s just scary.  I think we’re going to see more pain than what we’ver seen already.

It’s pretty clear that a lot of lenders are at fault for chasing after buyers who couldn’t really afford mortgages, but there is a severe lack of personal responsibility of individuals in taking a loan that they can’t afford.

An excerpt from CBSNews.com: House Of Cards: The Mortgage Mess

But Matt and Stephanie Valdez say they knew exactly what they were doing when they bought a small two-bedroom for $355,000. They could afford the initial payments and planned to refinance the mortgage before the interest rate jumped to 11 percent. But they couldn’t do it because the value of the house had fallen below what they owed on the mortgage. They say they can afford the higher payments, but see no point in making them.

“The house keeps going down, payments keep going up. Where’s the logic in that? And how can we fix it? I mean, that’s what this whole thing’s about for us is how can we fix this? And if we can’t fix it, then what do we do?” Matt Valdez asks.

“Why pay a $3,200 payment on a 1200-square-foot home? It makes no sense,” Stephanie Valdez adds.

“That’s what you agreed to do when you bought the house,” Kroft points out.

“Fine. If the value is going up. But we’re not going anywhere. The price or the value is going down. It makes no sense because we will never be able to refinance and get a lower payment. There’s no way,” Stephanie Valdez replies.

“You’re saying, essentially, that you’re going to stop making payments on it? You’re just gonna let it go into foreclosure?” Kroft asks.

Coming to a museum near you! Katrina Victims Bodies on Display! Twenty African African-American, unclaimed and unknown victims of this hurricane tragedy are artistically dissected and posed in lifelike educational exhibits.  See a body’s muscles as they ripple from the exertion of running away from a breaking levee.  See a cross-section of a drowning victim’s lung to see how much water it can hold before death. Examine the impact of alcohol on a liver of a drunk homeless person. It’s a moving and educational experience!

This exhibit does not exist, thankfully, not because there aren’t unclaimed victims of Katrina.  There are still about 100 unclaimed Katrina victims that are still refrigerated, awaiting burial.  It does not exist because of the staggering outcry an exhibition like this would bring.  The public would collectively say that showing the dead in this manner is undignified and against the customs of all cultures.

Since the dawn of time, humankind has always treated the dead with respect.  This respect is so important that the breaking of this is taboo, a shocking and horrific deed.  The imagery of an American soldier being dragged through the streets or a body of a young black man hung from a tree is unbearable and has mobilized people into action to change the course of history.

Add race or religion to this mix and you’d have a total inferno.  Just the thought of displaying twenty dead African African-Americans without their consent is unfathomable.  How about twenty dissected and unclaimed Jews? How would you feel?  How about twenty Chinese?

Wait. Twenty Chinese?  Twenty Chinese on display without their consent.

Where’s the outrage?

Bodies: the Exhibition, opening February 1, 2008 at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, is just such an exhibition.

Preserved and dissected Chinese bodies are being put on display without their consent. Premier Exhibitions, Inc. chief medical advisor, Dr. Roy Glover, states in a letter to the Columbus Dispatch September 24, 2007:

“We have legal documentation and representation that confirms that only
the bodies of people who are deceased from natural causes have been
included in the exhibition and have been acquired by legal means with
the highest of ethical standards.”

It is standard practice not only throughout Asia but also here in the
United States for unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to
medical schools for education, the core of our exhibition.”

(bold text- my emphasis)

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?  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.  These bodies are condemned to a lifetime of traveling to shopping malls in the name of “education” as part of this freakish sideshow. 

Premier Exhibitions, Inc. states that it’s common for “unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to
medical schools for education”.  But before Premier Exhibitions, Inc. brought this show to “educate” the masses in Cincinnati, this show had traveled to these noted centers of higher learning:

Las Vegas: Tropicana Resort & Casino
New York, South Street Seaport (Dining & Entertainment Center)
San Diego, University Towne Center (Mall)
Columbus, OH, Easton Market (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Framingham, MA (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Durham, NC, Streets at Southpoint (Mall)

Shopping malls and a casino.  If you donated your body to science, would you expect it to be seen at a casino? 

Let’s be clear that this is a for profit show. Premier Exhibitions, Inc.
is a publicly traded company with shareholders to answer to. The Cincinnati Museum Center believes this
exhibit combined with the previous Pirates exhibit will create the
“busiest 12 months in Museum Center history.”  Traveling exhibitions
like this are big business in the same tradition as carnivals and freakshows of the 19th century.  Bodies, the Exhibition is now one of a
number of competing traveling exhibitions in the country.

Museums with higher ethical standards will not allow exhibits such as this. The City of San Francisco has already banned this type of exhibition and the State of Washington has a law in the works that would do the same.

Showcasing the deceased in this manner without their permission is wrong.  Charging money and profiting from unclaimed bodies is even worse.  Is it not our duty as humanity to care for those who are less fortunate?  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.

Consent is critical.  If consent doesn’t matter then we’d be harvesting organs from all the dead to save the living.

It is educational, but the Nazi’s experimented on Jews in the name of education.  That’s not right .

Ethics are important not some thing to be skirted.

Let’s end this now and take a stand here in Cincinnati and let the world know that it is not right and not ethical to show unclaimed bodies without their informed consent.  That it is wrong to show the dead for profit.  We are better than this, as Cincinnatians, as Americans, as humanity.

Boycott Bodies the Exhibition Cincinnati website

Resources and more information:

News and Opinion
SeattlePI.com: If only these bodies could talk
NYTimes: China Turns Out Mummified Bodies for Displays
The Epoch Times: ‘BODIES . . . The Exhibit’ is Gruesome Show of Unidentified Dead
NYTimes: Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste
SeattlePI.com: Education or freak show? ‘Bodies … The Exhibition’ cashes in on our own curiosity
Pittsburgh Post Gazette: China ‘Bodies’ exhibit raises hackles here
RedOrbit: Museum Plans to Open Corpse Show in Fla.
SeattlePI.com: $10,000 reward posted to find who stole kidney from display
SeattlePI.com: First Person: Exploiting the poor beyond death

Cincinnati specific articles
From WCPO.com: Bodies …The Exhibition Draws Criticism (VIDEO)
From WCPO.com: Bodies …The Exhibition Draws Criticism (Story)
Cincinnati Enquirer: Archbishop says no to ‘Bodies’ exhibit
Cincinnati Enquirer: ‘Bodies’ exhibits troubling ethical issues
Cincinnati Enquirer: Exhibit to show real bodies
DocGrubb’s opinion piece
Cincinnati Enquirer: Bizarre ‘Bodies’ left me queasy

Protest and Information Sites
Stop Body Worlds and other exhibits of plasticized bodies
The Anti-BODIES Virtual Protest Site
No Bodies 4 Profit
seattlechatclub.org: The Mystery of the Crying Cadavers

Here’s an interesting article that kind of sums up how I feel about the economic “stimulus” handout that the government is planning.  I’m all for getting free cash from the government, friends, pretty much anyone, but I really think it’s a short sighted use of money that won’t have a real impact on the problems that are occurring in our economy.

Why The U.S. Economic Stimulus Plan Won’t Have Much Effect

From CNN.com: Producers reveal title of new James Bond

Ever wondered what your stuffed bear looks like turned inside out?  Well wonder no more! Photographer Kent Rogowski has created a series of portraits of stuffed bears turned inside out.  Some are still strangely kind of cute while others are expectedly a bit grotesque.