The Berkeley Beacon

Issue date: 10/26/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: Steve Klise No, its not a scene from Saw III, its one of the models from Body Worlds 2.

Understanding the human body has always been a complicated and mystifying quest.

Well, not anymore.

Thanks to Dr. Gunther von Hagens' unique plastination process, it is possible to create an exact replica of a human body by extracting all of the fluids from donated human bodies and then replacing them with plastic and chemicals (like acetone and polymers).

Throughout the year-long process, the organic body matter slowly falls away, leaving the plastic versions of whole bodies, organs and body slices. Actual human tissue determines the look and feel of the finished specimen, according to the Body Worlds Web site.

Body Worlds 2, an exhibit of von Hagens' plastinates, is currently at the Boston Museum of Science. More than 200 authentic human specimens are on display, from whole bodies to individual organs.

At the exhibit, people stood in awe, from the guy in the corner who seemed to be mentally comparing his penis size to that of the "Body Builder" to the elderly woman gazing at a plastinate with such an intense look in her eye that you wonder if she had known the subject at some point in time.

Some plastinates show only bone structure or only muscles, or only the body's nervous system. Others have partial skin covering the body while others have none.

While every specimen in the exhibit is incredible, certain areas draw greater crowds than others. The most popular include a giant camel and, perhaps most moving, the human development section which features embryos in multiple stages of gestation, along with a woman, five months pregnant, with her child still curled in the womb.

Other exhibits include a comparison between a healthy lung and a smoker's blackened tissue. Some bodies are posed like athletes, such as a soccer player.

When asked about the rumor that the bodies were Asian prisoners obtained unethically, Jonathan Burke, vice president of visitor services and operations at the museum, said there are some exhibits that use bodies from various parts of the world and obtain them in various ways but, contrary to rumor, all bodies used in Dr. von Hagens' exhibition were donated via donor consent form. In the end, however, "they are all the same: dead body exhibits," Burke said.

Continued...

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