'Dr Death' to sell body parts over the internet - Science, News - The Independent

Quote:

Gunther von Hagens, the originator of the controversial Body Worlds anatomical exhibitions, has provoked a fresh storm of criticism in Germany after announcing plans for an online store selling plastinated human body parts. Mr von Hagens, who enjoys the nickname "Doctor Death" because of his highly publicised shows, which display fleshless human corpses that have been injected with plastic resin, revealed his plans for internet expansion in a letter to his clients. According to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the letter said an online plastinated body parts shop would go online from 3 November, selling whole human bodies for €69,615 (£61,733) apiece. Mr von Hagens has insisted however that his products will not be available to the general public, and will be sold only to scientists and medical experts. In addition to whole bodies, the shop will offer torsos at €56,644 each and human heads at €22,015. Plastinated animal parts will also be available. His plans have provoked angry criticism from Germany's Roman Catholic Church, and further condemnation of the project is almost certain to follow. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch appealed to politicians to ban the online store, insisting that Mr von Hagens was "breaking a taboo". Dismissing Mr von Hagen's repeated claims that his plastinated bodies are of scientific value, the archbishop said the idea showed lack of respect for the dead. "This is not about new discoveries but about picking at bones and creating a spectacle under the guise of medical enlightenment," he said. Mr von Hagens, who likes to dress in black and is almost always seen in public wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, has been a source of controversy since he developed his plastination technique more than a decade ago. The process involves removing body fluids and fat from human corpses and replacing them with plastic resin. In 2002, Mr von Hagens went ahead with the first public autopsy held in Britain for 170 years despite concerns that he would be arrested. In 2004 he was accused of using the bodies of executed prisoners sold to him by China. He subsequently returned seven corpses which had injuries to the head because he could not prove that they had not been executed. After opening a series of provocative Body Worlds exhibitions showing human bodies in various poses, Mr von Hagens went a stage further in May last year when he displayed two plastinated bodies having sex, in an exhibition entitled "Cycle of Life". The show prompted a cross-party group of German MPs to demand that the exhibition be withdrawn. However virtually all attempts to stop his exhibitions have failed. Mr von Hagens recently reopened his "Plastinarium", a factory in the east German state of Brandenburg which turns out plastinated corpses and employs 200 workers. Attempts to stop the plant going ahead were overruled because it provided jobs in a region suffering from high unemployment. Mr von Hagens has long since become a millionaire.

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Where does he get his bodies from already?

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People write him into their wills.

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Seriously?! Well, then, freedom of choice, baby.

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You can buy a functioning kidney if you have the right contacts. Why not a plasticized one?

Originally Posted by Jayne B

You can buy a functioning kidney if you have the right contacts.

Apart from a very few country like Iran that legalise organ sales (but in a very specific fashion, iirc), I believe organ sales are actually mostly illegal.

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If I needed a kidney I wouldn't let little details like that stand in my way. (The complete lack of contacts with anyone who'd be able to sell me one, on the other hand...)

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Sure but that wasn't my point. Jayne B said that you can get a live kidney (illegally) so why not a plastic one?

My answer: Coz the plastic one is getting into expositions and thus it has to be legal.

No doubt that you can keep a plastic kidney illegal either. By definition, as soon as you drop the legality requirement, anything's possible.

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I see your point.

I guess it goes against the legal custom that you're not allowed to pay for stuff related to bodies, but even then people already find a way round it. You get paid for being a human guineapig, but they just call it "covering your expenses". Von Hagens could presumably do the same thing - "I'll send you a kidney for free because we're all deeply altrustic scientists here, but the cost of shipping it is $60000."

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Quote:

Mr von Hagens has insisted however that his products will not be available to the general public, and will be sold only to scientists and medical experts. In addition to whole bodies, the shop will offer torsos at €56,644 each and human heads at €22,015. Plastinated animal parts will also be available. His plans have provoked angry criticism from Germany's Roman Catholic Church, and further condemnation of the project is almost certain to follow. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch appealed to politicians to ban the online store, insisting that Mr von Hagens was "breaking a taboo". Dismissing Mr von Hagen's repeated claims that his plastinated bodies are of scientific value, the archbishop said the idea showed lack of respect for the dead. "This is not about new discoveries but about picking at bones and creating a spectacle under the guise of medical enlightenment," he said.

What a crick of shot.

Can we not get past an animalistic ritual: that showing respect for the dead involves lengthy ceremonies involving their decaying (or embalmed) flesh.

The man has gone. He is dead. He has dropped off the perch. He is deceased.

He has probably left behind a Facebook page, a large body of twitters and emails and perhaps even a blog or an accumulation of Flickr photos. If you want a moving public ceremony, print out these and lovingly burn them to ashes. The 50, 70, 90 or (increasingly often) 150 kilograms of residual dead meat and bones are best processed into organic fertiliser.

Maybe his descendents will then have a better life expectancy than him.

Probably a picture would also help. As the poor creature is dying, offer him one of these:



If lots of people liked it we would have ceramic mosaics all over footpaths everywhere.

Newtown has a churchyard of funeral stuff:



That's very nice and all very well but do we really want to do that anymore?