Bodies... impresses, unnerves viewer

Posted on a plaque immediately before the entrance to Bodies...The Exhibition is a sign stating “The specimens you are about to see are real.” The “specimens” include 21 complete bodies and over 250 organs and other parts, which are on display at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center.

Protected against decay through the process of polymer preservation, the bodies are almost entirely intact, less some skin and hair, and their tissue water has been replaced with silicone rubber.

The resulting human specimen thus has undergone minimal structural change. This exhibit, according to another plaque, is designed for “allowing you to experience an amazing connection to your own body, the organism closest to you.”

Immediately upon entering the first room of the exhibit, I caught sight of an entire human skeleton hanging with a hook through its skull that strangely resembled a metal clothes hanger. It was only a skeleton though with the joints attached by metal screws. The optional $5 audio tour explained the names of some of the major bones of the body, as well as a brief overview of their functions.

There were eight glass cases in the room with various detached bones, but these didn’t hold my attention as much as the candy-cane colored specimen standing in the corner.

It was a complete skeleton but also contained some red areas of deep muscle and tendons. His right arm rested upon a shovel, and his head was tilted upwards with his left palm outstretched in front of him; his pose seemed eerily religious.

He was quite different from the previous bones, and was the only skeleton that looked just like the one hanging in the front of my high school anatomy classroom. His eyes had been preserved with colored contacts placed over the iris because (this I learned at the exhibit) the colored part of the eye turns white after death.

Something about the eyes, bulging out of his skinned and mostly muscleless skull, gave me chills.

Following the skeletal and muscular specimen was the nervous system room, which contained a glass encased specimen consisting of a brain, major nerves, and eyeballs reminiscent of the Mars Attacks aliens.

The lights were minimal as I entered the room depicting the circulatory system specimen, making it feel as if I was actually inside a body viewing the red glowing veins. The light returned when I entered the respiratory, digestive, and reproductive/urinary rooms, but it was dark in the optional embryonic and fetal development section, where all specimens died of natural causes in utero.

Inside were fetuses from different stages of development, allowing the viewer to gain a deeper understanding of the complex stages of growth. I was amazed when looking upon an eight- week-old fetus, barely the size of a Polly Pocket doll.

Throughout the exhibit there was a definite promotion of healthy lifestyle choices— the actual damage done by smoking, eating too much, pollution, and abusing drugs and alcohol were seen in many of the rooms; diseased tissue was often placed alongside healthy tissue, graphically showing the self-inflicted damage of unhealthy choices. At the end of the respiratory room, there is a large clear plastic receptacle encouraging smokers to throw away their cigarettes.

The exhibit provides a unique merging of science and art, but there has been some objection to the use of cadavers for education of the general public. Rebecca Hoover, a fifth year Civil Engineering major, said she felt the exhibit was quite progressive. “It’s exciting to see our society take such bold steps for the sake of public education and entertainment. Everyone should see it,” she said.

Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions Inc. has taken similar exhibits to Tampa and New York City and in doing so has created quite a controversy across the country.

The bodies were acquired from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in the People’s Republic of China, where they receive unidentified or unclaimed bodies in much the same way as in the States. This is where much of the dispute over the exhibit arises. Many if not all of these people had not given explicit consent for their bodies to be used for such an exhibit.

Others have objected to the nature of the exhibit in general, believing that viewing the body in this way is disrespectful. At the end of the exhibit are two messages upon the walls, “The specimens in this exhibition have been treated with the dignity and respect they so richly deserve,” followed by “To see is to know.”

The exhibit is open seven days a week, and it is scheduled to continue through September. Adult tickets are $20. Tickets and more information are available at www.bodiestheexhibition.com.