Last weekend, I went to see
Bodies: The Exhibition at the South Street Seaport. It was awesome. I'm in classes now to eventually get my Master's degree as a Physician's Assistant, so I found it very enlightening and fascinating. I understand so much more now than I did before.
However, there's some
controversy about some of these exhibits - if not this one, than others with similar ideas - and I was wondering what y'all thought about it. The main controversy in Florida seems to be about where they obtained the bodies and if they had actual consent.
Link
Quote:
The corpses and body parts used in "Bodies: The Exhibition" were "legally obtained" from various medical schools and universities in China, Glover said. In addition to being a spokesperson for "Bodies," Glover is a professor emeritus of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"It is standard legal practice in both the United States and China that unclaimed or unidentified remains are made available for medical education, which is one of the key goals of our exhibition," he said.
But Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is uncomfortable with the practice. Regardless of the law, the use of unclaimed bodies in human-anatomy exhibits is questionable, Caplan says.
"There's a fine line between education and exploitation in these kinds of exhibits. And you only want people to be displayed if you have their consent, not the consent of a third party," he said.
Since the bodies are either unclaimed or unidentified, obtaining consent was impossible, Glover said.
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I get it now... why my knee still hurts. Why it's so painful when my sciatic nerve twinges. How amazing our hip joints with their perfect spheres are. How beautiful all of our muscles are. How delicate and gorgeous our circulatory system truly is.
What do you think? I feel that, frankly... no one claimed the bodies, and if they didn't care to do that, then this is one of the best uses they're going to fulfill - educating people all over the world about the human body and how we are made. Would you go? Would you skip the fetal development section? (I can completely understand why, it could be pretty disturbing to people.)