From the Body Worlds Exhibit currently in Dallas:
Throughout the ages, medical scholars and students have strived to understand how our bodies function through exploration of real human specimens. BODY WORLDS, the most highly attended touring exhibition in the world, takes this tradition one step further by presenting a new look at the human body.
The exhibition features approximately 200 authentic human specimens, including whole bodies, plastinated individual organs and transparent body slices that have been preserved through the process of Plastination, a technique that replaces bodily "fluids and fat with reactive plastics. BODY WORLDS offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and understand our own physiology and health and to gain new appreciation and respect for what it means to be human.
This exhibit is being promoted big time. I have a keen interest in science, especially human physiology, but I will not be attending. You could not drag me there in a limo with champagne and Hugh Jackman in the back seat. It gives me the creeps. There is something very wrong about displaying real human bodies in this manner - very wrong. There is nothing to be learned by it. It is simply ghoulish voyeurism. Take a look at the video introduction. This is clearly not being marketed as a scientific exhibit. It borders on the dark side - and people love it. That bit about gaining appreciation and respect for being human could not be further from the truth and they don't believe that shit any more than I do. This exhibit does the exact opposite. It would be revealing to take an exit poll of the people at the exhibit and ask them why they attended and what they've learned from this exhibit.
Throughout the ages, medical scholars and students have strived to understand how our bodies function through exploration of real human specimens. BODY WORLDS, the most highly attended touring exhibition in the world, takes this tradition one step further by presenting a new look at the human body.The exhibition features approximately 200 authentic human specimens, including whole bodies, plastinated individual organs and transparent body slices that have been preserved through the process of Plastination, a technique that replaces bodily "fluids and fat with reactive plastics. BODY WORLDS offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and understand our own physiology and health and to gain new appreciation and respect for what it means to be human.
I'm not surprised by people's fascination with dead bodies and death. It is the culture in which we live. On television, the most graphic displays of mangled and decomposed bodies are now commonplace. I will not watch those either, but I imagine that the majority of people do and are entertained by it. Mind-warping is what it is. One wonders where '"entertainment" will go. How dead can one make a body. How mangled? How warped can it get? Much more. The evil imagination has no limits.
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