I criticized the Leonardo's exhibit of Body Worlds and stirred a hornet's nest with a post made early this morning.
It must have touched some nerve - some corporate nerve sensitive to public criticism.
However, it is no accident that this type of enterprise thrives in communist countries where the worth of the individual is subordinate to the collective lust for knowledge, and where reverence for human life and sexuality is reduced, not to a chunk of earth or to a quintessence of dust, but, sex, to a mere drink of water (Stalin) and human life to a preserved body in a glass case on Red Square (Lenin) - worshipped, revered, and preserved for future generations of uber-scientists and social engineers.
Again, it's no accident that in the three countries that have sponsored mass executions in the last century - Germany, Russia and China - traffic and commerce of these bodies is the most fierce; and that such coinage of flesh is so indifferent, save for the art of achieving some secularist immortality.
Likewise, it is no accident that such an exhibit should stir up such controversy than here in the United States - one of the most religious countries in the world. I'm a tad concerned this exhibit Body Worlds originates in Europe, where religious faith and practice has waned in the past several scores of years.
In a PBS special on medical school at Harvard, a young med student said that in her gross anatomy class she got a little teary-eyed for the old woman who lay on the table. She said she wept openly for the woman in that first anatomy session, such was the reverence we should all have for human life. However, this exhibition, with its "noisy crowds" precludes the studied awe von Hagen's work could inspire.
But I sense that medical secularists in Utah make shrewd decisions to teach those hocus-pocus Mormons a thing or two about their bodies, and also shed some light on their supposed focus on the heart as the locus of spirit.
They need to spend a night reading Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring, Henry J. Eyring, 2007 ISBN-13:978-1-59038-854-9.
And then spend a weekend gappling with Evolution and Mormonism: A Quest for Understanding, Stephens, Meldrum, Peterson, 2001. ISBN 1-56085-142-2 (pbk.)
[If this is a personal response, thank you to "Body Donation for Plastination".]
Here's the response that my blog this morning generated:
Body Donation for Plastination said...
Budding reporters wishing to learn the anatomy of media bias need look no further than Neda Ulaby’s series on public anatomical exhibitions or “cadaver shows,” as she insists on calling them. In her broadcasts and Reporter’s Notebook (NPR, All Things Considered, Aug 11-12) she plays fast and loose with principles of journalism [So I said: I'm not so sure it's "fast & loose." Advocacy journalism raises quick questions that deserve answers.], such as the discipline of verification and the identification of sources [Something the cadaver papers lack, too, and need shoring up.].
In “Origins of Exhibited Cadavers Questioned,” where the lone voice questioning the origins of the specimens in Gunther von Hagens’ BODY WORLDS is Ulaby herself [Wait a minute, I'm here wondering about it too. And I know how quickly so-called experts can sign-on when it's something they really want.], she states that though the donor death certificates have been matched with donor forms by renowned ethicist, Dr. Hans Martin Sass, “there’s no clear paper trail from willing donors to exhibited bodies.” On the contrary, there is a very clear paper trail between deceased donors and plastinated specimens that falls within the bounds of medical confidentiality. [Understood, but she's saying those "bounds" have been muddied and made murky.]
The Institute for Plastination has made as much donor information as possible available to museum lawyers and bio-ethicists, without violating the code of medical confidentiality. We will reveal the same information willingly to any legitimate government authority with jurisdiction in Germany that also honors medical confidentiality. “[Dr. von Hagens] says each body he displays can be accounted for, but he is unwilling to make public a complete paper trail,” Ulaby reports. Her objection appears to be that the Institute for Plastination does not release confidential medical information to the media. [A well-founded distrust.] We have learned from the past about reporters’ lack of discernment about matters of privacy. Before Dr. von Hagens conducted a public autopsy in London, the relatives of the deceased man, whose body was to be autopsied, reassured journalists that their father had agreed to the procedure but asked that his name be withheld. Several of the reporters broke their agreement and revealed the man’s identity. We learned too from the case of Paul Jernigan, the death penalty inmate who was executed in Texas, and his body used for the "Visible Human Project." Many journalists stalked Jernigan’s family to get their stories, without any regard for the family’s grief. We are acutely sensitive to the fact that the donors willed only their post mortal bodies for the education of many—not their personal lives, case histories, or any other aspect of their earthly lives—and will not violate the code of medical confidentiality to satisfy reporters’ curiosity. [You miss her point that they should be verified by an independent agency, not just ethicists who got discounts on their tickets.] Ulaby, as prosecutor [This weakens your argument. She has legitimate concerns where the paper trails break down.], decides that Dr. von Hagens -- an anatomist who invented Plastination in 1977 at the University of Heidelberg to improve medical education for his students -- is guilty of using executed Chinese prisoners in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions until he proves himself innocent.[I think a prima facie burden has been met, throwing doubt on the process - his turn to respond.] “He says that he obtains them all only through trusted sources, but no outsider has verified that they might not be, in a worst case scenario, dissidents killed in a Chinese prison, then sold through a body broker to a medical school, and then displayed to the public,” she reports. The onus apparently is on Dr. von Hagens -- the only anatomist presenting an anatomical exhibition, the only presenter of anatomical exhibitions with a body donation program of more than 8,500 donors, nearly all of them European -- to prove that the specimens in his exhibitions “might not be, in a worst case scenario, dissidents killed in a Chinese prison, then sold through a body broker to a medical school, and then displayed to the public.”[Oh, stop with the self-righteous "such a man as this" argument. He's the only one because for many professionals, there remain serious ethical-religious reservations about such exhibition practices.] Ulaby has no problem, however, with copycat exhibits
[But I do. And here's why: Amid all this controversial art and science, in 50 to 100 years, we might have cheapened life to such a degree that such a lack of reverence could make wars and destruction of human life less abhorrant and more clinical as in Nazi Germany, but with much greater consequence. Again, Russia and China already have a long record of abuses in this arena. So, I'm a little reluctant to subsidized these attitudes with my $20 educator's discount. And so should be a large part of Utah.]
that use only unclaimed and found bodies from China, have no donor programs, and do not have a paper trail, let alone documents. “Critics say that at best those bodies probably belonged to people too poor to have been buried properly.” In other words, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, a 33 year career anatomist with an established donor program of mostly German donors, must prove that he does not use executed Chinese prisoners in his exhibit, while publicly traded exhibition companies that use only unclaimed and found Chinese bodies are exempt from Ulaby’s suspicions. This is not simply journalistic bias, it smacks of bigotry.Currently, there is no national or international law or ethical imperative of informed consent for anatomical specimens. In fact, the majority of anatomical specimens in the world originate from unclaimed bodies. In Maryland, for example, any unclaimed body is by law handed over to the State Anatomical Board, embalmed and distributed for a fee to anatomical institutes around the country. Even in Great Britain under the supervision of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Anatomy (presently Dr. Jeremy Metters), human plastinates are not tracked. Skeletons are sold freely in all countries and are even available via the Internet. Compared to plastinates, these skeletons consist of 100 percent human tissue (plastinates are around 30 percent) and there is no international standard of informed consent. Dr. Gunther von Hagens conceived the world’s first and only body donation program for Plastination to uphold no one else’s standards but his own.For more information:www.bodyworlds.comFor ethics report:http://www.koerperwelten.de/Downloads/ethics_summary.pdf-Institute for Plastination and BODY WORLDS, Office for Body Donation
September 8, 2008 9:42 AM
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