Chefelf.com Night Life: "Bodies" Exhibit Debate - Chefelf.com Night Life

Jump to content

  • (4 Pages)
  • +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Last »

"Bodies" Exhibit Debate educational or high-profit unethical freakshow?

#1 User is offline   mireaux7 Icon

  • Level Boss
  • PipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 475
  • Joined: 24-September 06
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:dallas, texas
  • Interests:art, tennis, films...esp foreign films-those are some of the best ones ive seen, video games, reading, travel.
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 12:26 AM

I recently returned from a much needed vacation to Las Vegas. I stayed at the Excalibur, and happened to notice that the Tropicana next door was hosting the much talked about exhibit: "Bodies".

for those not in the know, this exhibit features many cadavers that have been preserved using a process that completely depletes the human corpse of all water content (as to prevent further decay), from there the entire cadaver is treated with a special polymer coating, which "plasticizes" the whole corpse.

the corpse itself (along with other corpses of each gender) are featured, alongside with various bodily organs as well in an exhibition that proclaims itself as being educational, but has those opposing it crying foul.

My experience with this exhibit is that it is truly phenomenal!

It was a day I will never forget, and by far and large the greatest exhibit I have ever been to. I only wished that cameras were allowed inside. (they arent, and all cell phones must also be powered off, as the museum hosts are aware of their camcorder/camera capabilities)

I was beyond fascination at everything I saw at the exhibit. I wont shed details, as I dont want to ruin or spoil the experience, but I will give a huge thumbs up, and say "do see this!!!"

I found this website which is against the exhibit, and states specific reasons for why you should be too.

http://nobodies4profit.org/

so, whats your view on this topic?, do you agree its educuational, or unethical?

This post has been edited by mireaux7: 20 November 2007 - 12:34 AM

QUOTE (njamilla @ Feb 23 2008, 08:16 AM)
Shit, Fuck, Piss: I had to say that because I can on this website. (Thanks Chef!)

QUOTE (chefelf @ Feb 23 2008, 10:30 AM)
That's what I'm here for.
0

#2 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

  • Pimpin'
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 2,876
  • Joined: 27-September 05
  • Gender:Female
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 09:20 AM

Wow, that site is ridiculous. Oh noes, he's a son of a Nazi and is never seen without his black fedora!!! (An attack against the developer of the plasticizing.) Okay, sure, it's profitable. But who wouldn't take advantage of that? Are they going to just be like, oh, no, we don't want the money. Psh. And just because we don't KNOW the bodies were donated legally doesn't mean they weren't. And of course the bodies are in poses such as they are - the point is to show how the body works in normal life, not just as a laying flat dead guy.

I've seen the exhibit, myself, and while yes, it was kinda gross (bodily functions often are), it was absolutely amazing. I wouldn't go so far as to call it art like some have, but it is definitely educational and eye-opening.

The site also states that the dude in the fedora polls kids on kids' sites to consider donating their bodies, when really, the link they provide is just an article about the exhibit that even talks about the controversy, and has no such poll that I could find (the link is on the page Mireaux provided).

And how unethical could it be? These guys are dead. If they were going around killing people to do this, or doing it to people while they were still alive, then there'd be problems. But until they have evidence of that, I'm a supporter.
I am writing about Jm in my signature because apparently it's an effective method of ignoring him.
0

#3 User is offline   Sailor Abbey Icon

  • Queen of the Harpies
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 2,122
  • Joined: 29-March 05
  • Gender:Female
  • Location:the land of Huskies
  • Interests:Defending the forces of evil from the whiney forces of good; spreading awareness about violence and its ability to solve all problems - from the very smallest to the very stupid…est…; sticking up for the little guy, as long as the little guy shares my point of view or is willing to convert in exchange for some ‘sticking up for’; and of course, plotting world domination and putting and end to reality tv once and for all. <br /><br />Oh, and beautiful women.
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 09:49 AM

The only people who would consider it unethical are religious nut bags who think its somehow desecration. Up until recently, the Catholic church didn’t even allow cremation, because it would prohibit the final resurrection on the final day of judgment or some such nonsense. So the Judeo-Christian god can reanimate corpses but he can’t resurrect cremated bodies?

Anyways, the idea that the body is a sacred vessel, even after death, is a concept imbedded in human culture, even if it is just hold over from when government and religion were inseparable.

I’m a religious nut myself (though of the Pagan sort), and though I do believe the body has spiritual significance, even after death, I also believe in both science and art. I’ve heard a lot of people want to volunteer for future such exhibits. Though I wouldn’t necessarily want to be in it, I still think it’s awesome and I would love to see it sometime.
0

#4 User is offline   Despondent Icon

  • Think for yourself
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 4,684
  • Joined: 31-October 03
  • Location:a long time ago
  • Interests:Laughter. Louis pups. Percussion. What binds us. Bicycling, Tennis.
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 12:05 PM

I don't know. There are reasons to raise eyebrows, certainly.

Mine is raised in the general sort towards Harvesting and Organ donorship. When one is peer-pressured into signing an organ-donor card, other than the "feel-good" self importance that comes with it, is the possibility that those handling my hand-me-down organs are filling their pockets at the same time.

Sure, there are lots of people who need organs. Many will pay a high dollar for them. And because I don't want to tick the box on my drivers license signifying that I'm an organ donor I'm somehow less compassionate?

But that's another argument.
0

#5 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

  • Pimpin'
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 2,876
  • Joined: 27-September 05
  • Gender:Female
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 12:30 PM

Hey, I don't want to be an organ donor, either. (I do give blood as often as possible, though.) Bleh.

But yeah, there are the questions regarding how they obtained the bodies and organs. If they get them through questionable means, that's bad. But I still support the ends, though I would not support those particular means.
I am writing about Jm in my signature because apparently it's an effective method of ignoring him.
0

#6 User is offline   Ninja Duck Icon

  • Cheer up, emo duck.
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 1,912
  • Joined: 30-October 03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Thrillsville
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 01:46 PM

Well, yeah, if I had a hat like that I would never be seen without it either.

Can someone conjure up some proof that all the bodies were willing donors in life, please? The Wikipedia article on Body Worlds cites this page as proof http://www.bodyworld...on_program.html but it's in German and doesn't say anything even if I could read German.

Unless I know that this is what people want done with their bodies when they die, I don't approve of this exhibit. Taking other people's bodies and parading them with silly captions is a pretty low way to make money. I went to a museum of Mummies in Mexico, and while it was interesting on a scientific level, it was a special kind of gross.
0

#7 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

  • Knows All The Girls Named Lola
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 7,234
  • Joined: 24-May 04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Rural Pahrump Nevada
  • Interests:Tyranny
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 02:05 PM

The whole "the bodies might not have been donated" thing is an amazing fallacy. It's scare mongering at its best. Firstly its illogical to think that these people would just walk around hoping to find a dead guy and then use them. Most dead guys wouldnt be in such a good state I imagine. And if they didnt just snatch corpses off the street the only other way to have gotten them was to pose as door to door coroners: "Bring out your dead... bring out your dead" and such. So unless Eric Idle is involved, I doubt it...

But theres no proof he ISNT involved, now is there? Think about it, man!

Anyone arguing the bodies might not have been donated might be an alien spore controlling a human body, I say.

Quote

I don't know about you but I have never advocated that homosexuals, for any reason, be cut out of their mother's womb and thrown into a bin.
- Deucaon toes a hard line on gay fetus rights.
0

#8 User is offline   princesskadee Icon

  • Mini Boss
  • PipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 206
  • Joined: 18-January 07
  • Gender:Female
  • Location:santa cruz, california
  • Country:United States

Posted 20 November 2007 - 02:30 PM

QUOTE (Sailor Abbey @ Nov 20 2007, 08:49 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Up until recently, the Catholic church didn’t even allow cremation, because it would prohibit the final resurrection on the final day of judgment or some such nonsense. So the Judeo-Christian god can reanimate corpses but he can’t resurrect cremated bodies?


yeah, i find that to be controversial as well. The Lord Almighty, from what were taught in sunday school, is "capable of all things great and small"

He made us from dust, and says we shall return to dust, but if we elect to return to dust ourselves upon our death, He cant miraculously restore us on Judgment Day??..gimme a break!!
Peter Brady was by far the ugliest Brady kid on the "Brady Bunch". I mean, they were all pretty ugly, and the fact that the Brady dad wanted to always take the boys out on overnight camping trips just a tad bit too often, gave me the creeps.
0

#9 User is offline   looktothesky Icon

  • Tudo Bem.
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 2,542
  • Joined: 10-November 03
  • Gender:Female
  • Country:Portugal

Posted 20 November 2007 - 05:13 PM

I went to this exhibit last year or so in Toronto. They actually had forms you could fill out if you wanted to donate your body when you died. I remember taking one, and it saying that there may be a chance that they won't use you -- but still. I also remember at the exhibit I went to it actually showed letters from the people who donated, or letters from their loved ones about seeing them in an exhibit such as this.
PRECIOUS VELIUS....
0

#10 User is offline   Ninja Duck Icon

  • Cheer up, emo duck.
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 1,912
  • Joined: 30-October 03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Thrillsville
  • Country:United States

Posted 21 November 2007 - 04:45 AM

QUOTE (J m HofMarN @ Nov 20 2007, 02:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Anyone arguing the bodies might not have been donated might be an alien spore controlling a human body, I say.


I'm just sayin', some nasty things can go down when you're the son of an SS officer and you always wear a black Fedora. When I saw the museum of the mummies, the bodies had all been taken from temporary graves (couldn't pay the fee for a permanent grave, because they're dead) and put on display unless a family member wanted to claim the remains. So it was basically a bunch of corpses of foreigners who didn't have any family anyone knew how to contact. Anyway. My point is that not a single one of them donated their bodies. The limiting factor was that no one related to them ever spoke up.

Feel free to ignore the preceding paragraph because I'm tired and rambling. I'll just take looktothesky's word for it because she's so trustworthy.
0

#11 User is offline   Sarah Icon

  • New Cop
  • Group: Junior Members
  • Posts: 9
  • Joined: 21-November 07
  • Country:United States

Posted 21 November 2007 - 10:27 PM

QUOTE (Ninja Duck @ Nov 21 2007, 04:45 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I'm just sayin', some nasty things can go down when you're the son of an SS officer and you always wear a black Fedora. When I saw the museum of the mummies, the bodies had all been taken from temporary graves (couldn't pay the fee for a permanent grave, because they're dead) and put on display unless a family member wanted to claim the remains. So it was basically a bunch of corpses of foreigners who didn't have any family anyone knew how to contact. Anyway. My point is that not a single one of them donated their bodies. The limiting factor was that no one related to them ever spoke up.

Feel free to ignore the preceding paragraph because I'm tired and rambling. I'll just take looktothesky's word for it because she's so trustworthy.



The production company's own words say it loud and clear. The bodies are not donated. They are unclaimed Chinese bodies, with Chinese paperwork and no regulations in the US. But Premier Productions trusts its partners in China, they are good friends. No one at any level of US government is looking at these exhibits. Does that make everyone feel better?

Read and decide for yourself.

Origin of exhibit’s bodies contested: Columbus Dispatch)
Link: http://www.columbusd...NA.html?sid=101
The bodies were unidentified or unclaimed, he said.”You have to take somebody’s word for it,” Glover said when asked how he can be sure. He said the head of the lab at Dalian is a longtime, trusted friend. (and fellow millionaire?)

Columbus OH, Channel 10
link: http://www.10tv.com/...1933689033.html
Glover admitted that the bodies used in Bodies… The Exhibition were obtained without consent. The bodies, he said, are unclaimed and were acquired from a Chinese medical school. “There was no permission,” Glover said.

They’re remains to be seen: Controversial human cadaver show will stop in
Link: http://www.signonsan..._1n6bodies.html
Glover and executives at Premier say their cadavers are unidentified and unclaimed persons …Obtaining informed consent is impossible, they say, but they do take all possible steps to ensure the bodies are legally and morally obtained.“Company executives traveled to China to find just the right partner,” Glover said. “Dr. Sui Hongjin (an anatomist at the Dalian Medical University plastination lab and former general manager of ‘Body Worlds’) is a very good friend of mine.”

Origins of Exhibited Cadavers Questioned – National Public Radio story
Link: http://www.npr.org/t...storyId=5637687
Roy Glover, spokesman for BODIES... The Exhibition, says its cadavers -- all from China -- did not come from willing donors. "They're unclaimed," Glover says. Groups such as the Laogai Research Foundation, which documents human rights abuse in China, have charged that the category of unclaimed bodies in China includes executed political prisoners."He stated that none of the material came from criminal institutions or homes from the mentally insane. But just his word on that, no documents," Dr. Lynn Romrell, Chair of Florida State Anatomical Board.
0

#12 User is offline   sesame_street_hustler Icon

  • Mini Boss
  • PipPip
  • Group: Junior Members
  • Posts: 112
  • Joined: 16-March 07
  • Location:somewhere shuffled in the cosmos of time and space
  • Country:United States

Posted 22 November 2007 - 07:29 AM

The concept of using a cadaver for biological experimentation and/or educational research is nothing new.

whats causing such a controversy is the obvious amounts of money being generated from this wide-scale exhibition venue, which has some suspecting that this is a staged money-making venture and the funds being generated arent just coincidental as a result of such a purported "macabre science fair"

what is interesting and noteworthy is that there is in fact an actual gift shop at the end of the tour (in which the items are priced rather expensive). it also raises an eyebrow that there is a form for those willing to donate their body for future exhibitions as well.
the world is a game of players & pawns with everyone striving to be the king
0

#13 User is offline   looktothesky Icon

  • Tudo Bem.
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Members
  • Posts: 2,542
  • Joined: 10-November 03
  • Gender:Female
  • Country:Portugal

Posted 22 November 2007 - 10:33 AM

Oh, haha, oops. I went to Body Worlds, not this new exhibition.
PRECIOUS VELIUS....
0

#14 User is offline   Spoon Poetic Icon

  • Pimpin'
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Moderators
  • Posts: 2,876
  • Joined: 27-September 05
  • Gender:Female
  • Country:United States

Posted 24 November 2007 - 12:36 AM

I never understood what kind of attachment a dead person could have to their bodies anyway. Or why their families would be so attached, either. Dude's not in there anymore, it's just a rotting shell. Who cares where it goes or what's done with it, as long as it's not disrespecting the person who used to be in that body? (And I don't see this exhibit as disrespectful.)

However, while I don't understand this need to keep dead people's bodies around and in tact (until they rot in the ground or whatever), I respect that others do. So if it's true that these bodies are obtained as "Sarah" (who seems to have created a profile specifically to lobby against the Bodies exhibit tongue.gif) and her links claim, that sucks and I am against it.

But many people have a problem with the exhibit itself, and would even if every body used signed up themselves and it was their lifelong ambition to be in it. I don't understand that mindset at all.
I am writing about Jm in my signature because apparently it's an effective method of ignoring him.
0

#15 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

  • Canada's Next Top Model.
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Head Moderator
  • Posts: 3,382
  • Joined: 01-November 03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:In Your Dreams
  • Interests:I like stuff.
  • Country:Canada

Posted 24 November 2007 - 01:06 AM

I don't have a problem with it even if the bodies were illegally obtained. Unless the people were actually killed specifically to farm their remains, I have no problem with any of it. Burying bodies is a waste, and I'd like it if every brain-dead individual just became property of the state. Then we wouldn't have to pester next of kin with garbage about organ donation (they get pestered even if you signed that card). When I die, if my organs are healthy, I want my kidneys to free two people from a lifetime of dialysis. I want my skin to help burn victims, my heart to save a life, my liver to be cut apart to help maybe a dozen people, my pancreas to help another, etc. What's left, if useful, can be used for research or fed to the fish for all I care.

As for art, well, it's just sculpture. It's not all that creative. Across the Universe, now that's art.

This post has been edited by civilian_number_two: 24 November 2007 - 01:06 AM

"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
0

  • (4 Pages)
  • +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Last »


Fast Reply

  • Decrease editor size
  • Increase editor size