Plastinate my body? Sign me up.

Don't know what you're doing this weekend, but for about 115 folks and their guests, Saturday includes a shindig at the California Science Center to meet people who -- like them -- have agreed to have their bodies impregnated in plastic (i.e. plastinated) when they die, then dissected, sliced or kept whole, and placed in exhibitions.

There will be refreshments. Mingling. Questions and answers -- and a chance to chat with Gunther von Hagens, creator of the Body Worlds exhibition (which displays real, plastinated human bodies from donors in exhibits around the world, including one at the California Science Center right now).

The event, which is closed to the public, is specifically a meeting of the body donor program of Hagens' Institute For Plastination, explains Georgina Gomez, manager of the institute's North American body donor program. "Very few people are enrolled in this program, so they like to get together," she says. There are 795 signed-up donors in the U.S. and Canada, 132 of which are in California -- she's one of them -- and they're "everyday people like you and I, people who are teachers, husbands, wives and retirees -- really, they come from all walks of life." 

Those who choose to be plastinated by the institute upon their death must sign consent forms to that effect and arrange for the transport of their body to an embalming facility. Then they're shipped off to the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany, where their bodies are stripped of fat and their fluids slowly replaced with plastic in a lengthy procedure that can take as long as a year. (A giraffe they plastinated recently took a record three years, Gomez says.)

Just in case you were wondering, the institute is not in the business of plastinating pets, though my  crasser side immediately thought of that money-making possibility. It's about education, Gomez said, about the structure and function of the human body. (In any case, a plastic furless Fluffy with veins, muscles and sinews revealed to full effect might not be very comforting.)

--Rosie Mestel

Comments

[tiki]

Good that Americans are signing up for this; perhaps now the exhibit can quit using bodies of tortured and executed Chinese prisoners.

[K. West]

I have been a body donor to the Insitute for Plastination for six years, and have to say that the confusion between Body Worlds and Premier Exhibitions is disturbing.

The Body Worlds exhibits exclusively use the cadavers of people who explicitly consented to donate their remains for medical education, or the enlightenment of laypeople through public exhibtiions in science museums. "Bodies - The Exhibition" is using unclaimed and undocumented Chinese cadavers, which may, or may not, be those of tortured and executed criminals. A federal law now under consideration to ban imported plastinated speciments should be amended to require that all plastinates have a paper trial that shows donor consent. Some 90 % of Body Worlds donors are from the German donation program, with roughly 800 Americans on the donor list.

Banning all imported plastinated specimens, as one verion of a Congressional bill states, would be disastrous for medical school education in the US, as various anamolies might not be available for study, and a shortage of plastinated specimen could result.

When my time comes,I would be deeply honored to join a future exhibit of plastinated human remains, hopefully inspiring others to donate their bodies for transplantation, medical research, anatomical studies, and plastination.

Without question, plastination beats any alternative, including traditional earth burial and decomposition, and direct cremation, a waste of valuable human resources.

[Sarah]

I wonder if donors are fully aware of all of the ideas Von Hagens may have for them. Do they all think they will end up center stage in one of his exhibits? Oh no. Sorry. He really prefers freshly dead young bodies. For those old battered bodies more like most cadaver donations, he may find other uses for you. And now, with all this surplus, the only limit is his own imagination. See here, his creativity is already inspired. Is being a reality TV crashdummy the kind of education you had in mind? What about anything he may think of for you in the next 5 years? Without some regulation, I guess you will be HIS to do with as he likes. Rent-a-corpse for Halloween parties? The only limitation will be his imagination.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv-reviews/gunthers-er/2008/05/30/1211654292604.html

And VH does NOT get off the hook on the whole ethics question. He started the Chinese production path, and in his words it was because labor and 'supply' were easy to obtain and cheap. He just got smarter faster. What happened to the non-consenting Russian bodies?