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Given the rather sensational nature of the exhibition, von Hagens has been the target of some serious accusations. One of the most persistent is that he has used bodies that were unclaimed, found, or even executed—a charge von Hagens vigorously denies. Confusing matters, the success of Body Worlds has spawned several copycat shows with which von Hagens has no connection, including “Bodies, the Exhibition” and “Our Body: The Universe Within.” Von Hagens says his bodies mostly come from a donation program first established in 1982, although a small number arrived from anatomical collections and anatomy programs. And there appears to be no shortage of supply: his Institute for Plastination’s donor roster is up to 8,000 individuals, including 700 Americans. “I am guided by a deep obligation to fulfill the commitment to them by presenting their bodies for the scientific work they chose for themselves after their death,” he says.
Von Hagens doesn’t disclose the identities or causes of death of the bodies. Nor does he sell or otherwise provide them to private collectors or dealers, he says. And for those who are curious, but not curious enough to visit: once the specimens are preserved, they are dry and odorless. Same goes for the gorilla and other preserved animals also on display.
Before the California Science Center hosted its first Body Worlds exhibit in 2004, the institution asked an independent bioethics review panel that included prominent physicians, ethicists, and religious leaders to scrutinize von Hagens’ human body donor process as well as his laboratory in Germany. “[The ethics panel] and we were satisfied, and in fact the body donor forms met and exceeded all legal standards,” says Jeffrey Rudolph, the center’s president and CEO. So comfortable with the process was the lifelong science educator that he has added his name to the donor list. “Why not give my body to continue my life’s work after I’m dead?” he asks.
It is not entirely surprising that for von Hagens to develop such an uncommon passion, he would have an unusual background. Born in 1945, he grew up in Greiz in the former East Germany. A rare bleeding disorder as a child required long periods of hospitalization, sparking an early interest in becoming a physician. “I … became very comfortable in that environment of the sick and dying,” he says.
He entered medical school in 1965 but became preoccupied with protesting communism, prompting him to attempt to defect to the West in 1968. He was caught at the border of what was then then Czechoslovakia and, at 23, was imprisoned for two years. Freedom came after West Germany paid $20,000 for his liberation as a political prisoner, enabling him to complete his medical studies in the West. But after joining the Department of Anesthesiology and Emergency Medicine at Heidelberg University, he was bored by the tedium, leading him to switch to the university’s anatomical institute. It was there, while gazing at bodies embedded in blocks of plastic, that he wondered why the material couldn’t be filled into the cells instead of around them. Plastination was born.
Von Hagens maintains that the principal aim of his exhibition remains education, not just about the inner workings of the human body but also about the effects of various diseases and lifestyle choices. Often, the impact is immediate: cleaning crews, he says, have been finding unopened packs of cigarettes atop cases containing the preserved blackened lungs of smokers. “The body shows many diseases easily, and it is not difficult to highlight,” he says.
That’s just one of the reasons he’s in the process of designing, for the New York University College of Dentistry, the first anatomy curriculum in the United States to use his polymer-infused specimens instead of cadaver dissection. There are advantages, he argues. “Plastination preserves the specimen right to the cellular level, and thus can be studied at a deeper, more penetrating level,” he says. “Systems can be isolated and studied in a more microscopic and tactile way that dissection does not allow.” An example on his website suggests that the gray matter visible in slices of the brain is easier to distinguish from the white medulla oblongata than is the case with a fresh organ.
Has von Hagens contemplated his own inevitable demise? Naturally. He long ago donated his own body to plastination. “My wife feels I should be at the entrance of the exhibit in my trademark hat greeting visitors,” says von Hagens. “My son believes I should be made into sagittal slices and distributed to venues around the world, thus fulfilling my desire to teach at multiple locations at the same time.” But before his family must make such a decision, von Hagens still has plenty of work to do: “There is an elephant currently undergoing plastination, which will take three to four years to complete.” This may be one of the few cases in which visitors will know a little something about the donor. Its name was Samba, and the 7,055-pound pachyderm died at a German zoo.
A companion photo essay is featured here.
