Bring Out Your Dead!
There’s an exhibit travelling the world that you’ve probably heard of. It’s simply called Bodies: The Exhibition, and it’s an admittedly fascinating look at real human bodies which have been stripped of their skin, plasticized, and posed in a variety of ways to demonstrate movement. It’s a unique perspective on what lies beneath what we see every day, with bones, musculature and organs visible for the education and amazement of audiences.
We have had an ongoing discussion about this exhibit in my home. My wife is very science-minded, and not the least disturbed by morbidity. She is the kind of woman who would probably have made an excellent forensic pathologist or coroner. She and our eldest daughter have very much wanted to see this exhibit out of the pure curiosity of what she can learn. And the exhibit is obviously informative.
For some reason, however, I’ve resisted going and I’ve asked them not to as well. I have a gut feeling that keeps telling me this is not an appropriate way to treat a human body. That while there is room for medical research within the bounds of the dignity with which we treat mortal remains, the sort of voyeuristic exhibitionism of something like this pushes the boundaries too far. I’ve been entirely unable to prove this, however, and I haven’t made a concerted effort to do so.
This morning, I read an article about some controversy that’s arisen in Cincinatti over the exhibit. It appears that Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk has instructed the Catholic schools there that this display is inappropriate for school trips, and that it’s up to the individual parents to decide whether to take their children:
He reiterated the point with a statement Monday, saying the church maintains that dead bodies must be treated “in a way that recognizes the dignity of the human person.”
“Within this framework, the use of bodies for scientific research and educational purposes has long been viewed as permissible provided that the consent of the deceased or the deceased’s family has been obtained,” the statement said. “The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified, is a different matter entirely. It is unseemly and inappropriate.”
“This is not a crusade and we’re not calling for a boycott,” Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the archdiocese said Monday. “He (Pilarczyk) is giving his own opinions about it.”
The spokesman seems quick to make light work of the bishop’s comments, but even if it’s simply his personal opinion, what he said has resonated with what I feel.
Have any of you been to this exhibit? Have you considered it? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Filed under: Brave New World, Catholicism, Science
I’m with you. And so is 2000 years of Catholic philosophy.
I did a story on this exhibit and its originator a couple of years ago, when it came to Toronto. I consulted a priest/theologian and he said that while it is not necessarily sinful to use a human body for medical research (with the person’s consent) that the use of it for display, essentially for the sake of gawking, raises some serious questions.
It is modernist philosophies that treats the human body as merely a thing, a meaningless bit of material rubbish we happen to be using to carry things with.
It is the same reason Catholics do not cremate and, if they are acculurated enough, find the practice more than mildly offensive.
It should not be forgotten that we are our bodies our bodies are us. The person we are is both body and soul, infused. Those “things” are not things, but people, and they have had their bodies turned into things by someone with no conception of the significance of what he has done.
Don’t forget that these “plasticized” things will rise on the last day and be judged either for glory or damnation, and be reunited for all eternity with the soul. Those bodies will look upon God,
“I know that in my flesh, shall I see God…”
This use of the human body is inherently offensive to Catholics who know what these things mean.
I recall, for example, a scene in the film Planet of the Apes, in which a number of human bodies had been used by the apes as museum objects, stuffed and placed in dioramas. We shared Charlton Heston’s horror to see his fellow men, one of whom was a friend, used in this way. Back in 1969, (or whenever the movie was made) we still retained enough of the vestiges of the old way of thinking that this was considered a frightening and horrifying thing to happen to real people.
Now, we are doing it ourselves and don’t have to wait for the Ape civilization to dehumanize us. Yet another result, I believe, in the vast and ravening darkness of the mind and soul that has descended upon us that John Paul II (that master of the trite sound bite) labeled the “culture of death.”
I recall, for example, a scene in the film Planet of the Apes…
And you question the value of science fiction as a force for serious culture? COME ON.
I remember someone mentioning that where they got the “donated” bodies was being questioned also. Foul play? Corrupt government? Makes you wonder.
With this exhibit, the line has been crossed between scientific and for show. I absolutely would not go.
I’m sure if I had been raised on serious literature instead of hippie stuff and sci fi, I could have produced a reference to some fancy English writer that no one but Warren reads any more.
But I wasn’t.
And if I had been, I would not be able to communicate with anyone else.
Warren frequently has that problem himself.
I remember someone mentioning that where they got the “donated” bodies was being questioned also. Foul play? Corrupt government?
I believe most of them come from China. Do we really need to speculate further? No? I will anyway: I wouldn’t be surprised if they still have family looking for them.
I don’t know anything about the exhibit you mentioned, but here in Saint Louis, we have the Body Worlds exhibit: the impresario of this show originally designed it as a Decadent spectacle for the prostitutes and homosexuals in Berlin. The corpses are shown in a fanciful, and not in a respectful, scientific manner. I strongly suspect that this exhibit would be an occasion of sin for those people who belong to certain “subcultures”, as well as a source of nightmares for children and some adults.
If this sort of thing were to be done in a tightly-controlled, scientific, and respectful manner, I’d support it.
It may be more appropriate to have a vigil service for them and for the familys that are probably still looking for them, as you said.
The difference between calling a freezer full of arms at a medical school acceptable and a freezer full of arms in Jeffery Daumer’s trailer a depraved crime is ETHICS. A medical student caught putting a cigarette in the hand of a cadaver would be expelled. A doctor or a funeral director slicing up a dead body in private would be guilty of - education? surely it is educational for them? - a crime: DESECRATION. There is no question that legitimate study of the human body is vastly beneficial. But do body exhibits for profit do anything for society as a whole, such as the benefit of training a doctor? No, its pure, personal, individual satisfaction of morbid curiosity.
Have you seen this NYTimes article? http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/business/worldbusiness/08bodies.html?pagewanted=print
No one knows where these bodies are coming from. No one at any level of our government is reviewing them. All we have are the entertainment company’s profiting employees to tell us its ‘ethical’. I can assure you they’re definition of ethics don’t match mine.
Thank you for your post and taking a stand against this abominable new form of entertainment.
Tune in to 20/20 this Friday, 2/15. I’m hoping to learn the real scoop.
Human Bodies on Display: Where Do They Come From?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4284629&page=1
[...] on The Exhibition of Human Bodies Posted on March 11, 2008 by Steve In January, I posted about the moral questions surrounding the seemingly popular exhibits travelling the country that [...]