{"id":132,"date":"2019-01-27T14:12:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T14:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2024-04-06T16:12:12","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T16:12:12","slug":"getting-under-your-skin-published-sunday-27-january-2019-0023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Getting under Your Skin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December 2018<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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Body Worlds is an exhibition of plastinated bodies. Where is the line between an educational experience and an exploitative show?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

As I was shepherded into a dimly-lit lift, I was expecting an exhibition designed to titillate and shock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you react to seeing a man standing, flayed of his skin, his \ninternal organs on view, his muscles brick red, his blue eyes staring \nout at you? Or what about the trio posed round a table playing poker? \nYou may have seen them in the film Casino Royale. James Bond stays cool.\n His interest is not the plastinates but how the villain manipulates \ntheir chips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no Daniel Craig the day I visited the exhibition, but a \ncrowd of people, all intensely curious and fascinated. Body Worlds, the \ncontroversial exhibition of plastinated human bodies, isn\u2019t voyeuristic.\n It isn\u2019t the Chamber of Horrors. It turned out to be earnestly \neducational. And compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only plastinate I personally found disturbing was the man holding his flayed skin in his hands, but I had recently seen much the same in Jusepe de Ribera\u2019s painting of Apollo flaying Marsyas. Ribera painted to disturb. Plastinates are made to intrigue and inform.

They are the brainchild of anatomist Dr Gunther von Hagens of Heidelberg. Looking for improved teaching aids for his students, he had the idea of impregnating anatomical specimens with plastic. Lay people were intrigued, so he created exhibitions for the general public. He worked out how to plastinate whole bodies, not just of humans \u2013 this exhibition includes a man on a rearing horse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was surprised that all the human bodies appeared so slim. But they \nhave been stripped of their fat. Forty years ago most people were that \nlean. Since then we have become accustomed to a population with a thick \npadding of adipose tissue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctors know how few patients understand the working of their own \nbody. Body Worlds aims to change that. It seems to be succeeding, to \njudge from the rapt attention visitors bestowed, not just to whole \nbodies, but to specimens of individual organs. How many people know \nwhere their kidneys are and how they work? Or how black a smoker\u2019s lungs\n are? The information content is serious and substantial, but leavened \nwith videos, cartoons, interactive demonstrations and quotes from sages \nfrom Confucius to Kant. You can\u2019t take photos in the exhibition so \nvisitors really engage with what\u2019s on show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I was made uneasy. But it wasn\u2019t squeamishness that disturbed me. It was speculating about the provenance of the bodies.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From start to finish the emphasis is on the damaging effects of \nmodern life and what you can do to mitigate them. I did not expect to go\n to Body Worlds and find myself encouraged to take deep breaths to \nreduce stress. But I did \u2013 and some weeks later I still do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 50 million people around the world have seen versions of Body \nWorlds, and the overwhelmingly positive comments on TripAdvisor justify \nDr von Hagens’ mission. As always, there are some who claim to have got \nnothing out of the experience. And some who complained about the cost. \nIt isn\u2019t cheap \u2013 \u00a324 for a ticket bought online, \u00a328 at the door, \nalthough curiously entry to the shows in continental Europe is less than\n \u20ac20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I was made uneasy. But it wasn\u2019t squeamishness that disturbed \nme. It was speculating about the provenance of the bodies. In China the \nlucrative market for kidney transplants was, and may still be, fed by \n\u2018donations\u2019 from executed prisoners. Suspicions have been voiced that \nBody Worlds\u2019 bodies come from the same source. The trafficking of \ncadavers and the manufacture of plastinated bodies and body parts are \nbig business in China, particularly in the city of Dalian. The general \nmanager of Dalian\u2019s biggest company was taught plastination by Dr von \nHagens, who also seems to have been involved in the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, were the bodies in Body Worlds obtained from what we would regard\n as an ethical source and with full voluntary consent? Voluntary \ndonations, unclaimed bodies and judicial executions could not possibly \nsupply sufficient fresh corpses for China\u2019s plastination industry. So \nwhere do they come from? Many new prisons and a cadaver processing plant\n have been built near the plastination factories in Dalian. Falun Gong, \nthe large spiritual movement which has become a focus of Chinese \ngovernment oppression, claims that the size of the plastination \nprogramme parallels the persecution and disappearance of hundreds of its\n members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No-one apart from the Chinese authorities knows the truth. However, \nDr von Hagens has taken steps to distance himself from these murky \nwaters. He stopped using Chinese bodies in 2007 and established a \ndonation programme which apparently has more than 18,000 potential or \nactual donors on its list. Body Worlds\u2019 website claims that nearly 80% \nof them are German, and all but 26 are European or American. Donors \nconsent to the use of their bodies for public as well as medical \neducation; some sign up because they see plastination as a more \ndignified and useful end to their corporeal existence than burning in a \ncrematorium or rotting in the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donors are guaranteed anonymity, which makes it impossible to marry \nup specimens with consent forms, but a 2017 review by the Ethics \nAdvisory Committee of the California Science Centre, an exhibition and \neducational establishment, assessed Body Worlds\u2019 documentation on donors\n and was reassured that appropriate consent was being obtained. And the \ncommittee commended the project\u2019s educational aims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you leave the exhibition, you pass six containers, each labelled \nwith a health resolve. You drop in tokens to indicate whether you intend\n to stop smoking, cut down alcohol, exercise more . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As GPs we know that giving patients health advice is easy, but \nkeeping them motivated is hard. So, do the good intentions expressed at \nthe end of a visit to Body Worlds translate into changed behaviour? A \nreview of visitors six months after their visit to Body Worlds in Vienna\n was cautiously encouraging. Most felt much better informed and up to \n33% claimed to have modified their lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a third of visitors actually make long-term changes, a visit to Body Worlds is more effective than many interventions offered by the NHS. So how about a partnership with Body Worlds? What about subsidising tickets for whole families, including a year of repeat visits and follow-up questionnaires and incentives? Lifestyle changes are more effective if everyone in the household is involved. It might just work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December 2018 Body Worlds is an exhibition of plastinated bodies. Where is the line between an educational experience and an exploitative show? As I was shepherded into a dimly-lit lift, I was expecting an exhibition designed to titillate and shock. How do you react to seeing a man … <\/p>\n

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