A Message from Bishop Frederick Henry
Body Worlds and the Brain
TELUS World of Science Calgary is excited to announce the Canadian premiere of the internationally acclaimed traveling exhibition. Body Worlds aims to educate the public about the inner workings of the human body and show the effects of poor health, good health, and lifestyle choices. It is also presented in the hopes that it will stimulate curiosity about the science of anatomy.
The following information blurb is both interesting and provocative: “As a key entry point influencing careers in science, TELUS World of Science promotes values such as curiosity, commitment, courage, and collaboration to help build on the foundation for Canada’s future economy.”
Notice that there is no mention of ethics or morality. However, it is also pointed out that Calgary’s exhibit is about 50 % larger than Edmonton’s similar exhibit a couple of years ago.
When a Body World exhibit came to Cincinnati, Archbishop Pilarczyk stated: “The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unidentified, and displayed without reverence is unseemly and inappropriate.”
In Kansas City, Bishop Finn and Archbishop Naumann complained: “It represents a kind of ‘human taxidermy’ that degrades the actual people, who, through their bodies, once lived, loved, prayed and died.”
Thomas S. Hibbs, distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University, not only questioned the tastefulness of the shows but asserted that the exhibits purvey a “pornography of the dead.”
What are some of the ethical issues involved?
Catholic moral teaching regards the human person as a unity of soul and body, spirit and matter - beings capable of freedom and love in communion with other persons and with God. As such, the body is more than just a vessel for the soul. The Church’s concern for human dignity extends to the body even after the soul is no longer present. The bodies of the dead deserve respect and charity, preserving the God-given dignity of the human person. In lieu of immediate burial, the church does allow for, and in some cases commends, the conscientious free choice of person to “donate” their bodies for legitimate scientific research and educational purposes. In these instances, the deceased body and its parts deserve respectful internment.
Some universities that use donated bodies for study and help students learn how to save other people’s lives conduct a funeral service at the end of the year, to which the family members of the deceased are invited.
By way of contrast, “plastination is the process of extracting all bodily fluids and soluble fats from specimens, replacing them through vacuum forced impregnation with reactive resins and elastomers, and then curing them with light, heat, or certain gases, which give the specimens rigidity and permanence” (italics added for emphasis). A cadaver is not a person but it once was and the human body retains its dignity even in death.
Another major issue is whether the bodies have even been appropriately obtained. Did the exhibitors receive the free and informed consent of the persons whose bodies are preserved and displayed? Informed consent requires adequate disclosure of information, each person’s ability to understand the full disclosure, the person’s ability to make a decision, and the freedom to choose or reject participation in the displays.
The possibility of trafficking in human bodies and the absence of appropriate legislation to regulate the transport and display of plasticized bodies raise concerns that are not easily dismissed.
An ABC News report in 2008 raised a serious caution that a Chinese black market might be selling bodies for $200 to $2000 to Dalian Medi-Uni Plastination labs in Dalian, China. The report sparked an investigation by the state of New York directly targeting Premier Exhibitions competitor of Von Hagen’s Body Worlds). The case was eventually settled by requiring the exhibitor to warn customers that the bodies may be those of tortured or executed people.
Von Hagen claims to have a sizable donor roster of several thousand. However, for purposes of inquiring into the issue of free consent, the paperwork is of limited value. Since the bodies are deliberately rendered anonymous in processing, there is no way to prove that this particular displayed body goes with this particular set of papers. There are both privacy and transparency issues to be sorted out.
There is morally laudable self-giving in the donation of one’s dead body to further knowledge for physicians in training with a view towards offering health and hope to patients who will be treated by those physicians. A good argument can be made that there is also legitimate educational value in the use of plastinated models to teach anatomy.
However, when fully plasticized bodies are displayed at play or posed in athletic mid-movement or ghoulishness, e.g. throwing a baseball, riding a bicycle, playing a violin, or a flayed person standing and looking downward at his innards with his skin all in one piece draped over his arm like a pallid coat, we have crossed the line from education into the realm of entertainment, questionable art, and commercial showcases.
Good insights are sometimes found by simply following the money. This doesn’t look like an non-profit educational enterprise. Who stands to gain by such productions? What’s the profit margin?
Whether or not children visit this exhibit is a parental decision. Is it appropriate for all? Probably not. Should attendance be related to a particular course of studies? Probably, and hopefully not just anatomy and economics.
March 21, 2010
✠ F. B. Henry
Bishop of Calgary
Here is a link to the original posting