View Comments      Email Article       Printable Version

Published: July 24, 2007

“Dogged by questions about the origins of the corpses”

Fetuses, corpses and body parts on display at macabre exhibition in San Diego (Part II)

This is Part II of a three-part series
(To read Part I, Click Here.)

While exhibitors claim the human remains on display at Bodies... The Exhibit now showing in San Diego were legally obtained from a Chinese firm through donor programs and that all of the subjects died of natural causes, many question their origins and documentation, given China’s history of human rights abuses and reputation for trading human organs and other body parts.

Executives with Premier Exhibitions, the Atlanta-based company behind the shows, “say their cadavers are unidentified and unclaimed persons who died of natural causes,” reported the May 20 San Diego Union-Tribune. “Obtaining informed consent is impossible, they say, but they do take all possible steps to ensure the bodies are legally and morally obtained,” Dr. Roy Glover, Premier’s medical director, told the newspaper. “We also have letters of assurance from the Chinese government that the cadavers are legal. I wouldn’t be involved if I thought otherwise.”

Last year, the New York Times reported on a “ghastly new underground mini-industry” that has emerged in China: “body factories,” where corpses are dissected, preserved, and re-engineered. “The industry,” reported the Times, “is dogged by questions about the origins of the corpses. Premier says its exhibition uses unclaimed Chinese bodies that the police have given to medical schools. None of the bodies, it says, are those of executed prisoners or people who died of unnatural causes.

“Officials at the Customs Bureau here in Dalian [China] and the Dalian Medical University, however, said they had no records showing the supplier of Premier having acquired bodies and then transporting them to exhibitions abroad. ‘I don’t know where the bodies came from,’ said Meng Xianzhi, a spokesman for the university.”

Harry Wu, director of the Laogai Research Foundation, told the Union-Tribune that in China “a paper document can be created very easily, and you never know if it is legitimate. China has thousands of executions a year and the government never releases any information about them – even the families aren’t given notice about an execution until after the execution. We never know where a cadaver comes from, whether it was donated or obtained illegally.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraphs 2300-01: “The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit... Autopsies can be morally permitted for legal inquests or scientific research. The free gift of organs after death is legitimate and can be meritorious.”

Although the Diocese of San Diego has not issued a formal statement about Bodies, the Archdiocese of Vancouver released a lengthy statement when a similar exhibit, Body Worlds, appeared there last September:

The primary concern is that the concept of the exhibit runs counter to Roman Catholic theology and our belief in the dignity of the human body, which we hold to be created in God’s image. This is more than simply a principle, but is a core belief, which permeates Catholic theology and teaching. The bodies of the unidentified persons posed and on display are as precious and as worthy of respect as the body of any person, priest, or Pope.

This respect for God’s greatest creation is not only Catholic or Christian theology, but is held by Jewish, Muslim and other believers as well. The reverence shown by First Nations people for the remains of their ancestors is also instructive.

Because we hold the body to be sacred, it must be treated with respect at all times. If it is to be used posthumously, the purpose must be worthy of the sacred vessel it is being permitted to use.

For instance, when human remains are used for medical research purposes, a priority that is warranted by the need to educate medical students in their service to mankind, stringent protocols are in place to ensure the donor fully consented to such use. Students are also aware of the great dignity of the person whose remains are before them, and those remains are properly and respectfully disposed of.

This is a far cry from what we see with the Body Worlds exhibit, which includes bodies and parts that were questionably obtained, for use in a popular attraction being widely advertised in the hope of drawing large admission-paying crowds.

Tomorrow, Part III:
“We object to the lack of dignity in the skinning of the bodies”

© California Catholic Daily 2007. All Rights Reserved.