To the Bodies Exhibit w/ kiddo?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I used to work for the Smithsonian. I drove two hours to see the Body Worlds exhibit, was completely blown away by it, and would recommend it to anyone.

The comments of the ethicists concerned about the voyeurism issue seem strikingly anti-intellectual and anti-science to me, and I give them no weight at all.

However, the ethical problems of Bodies: The Exhibition (bodies used without the donors’ consent, possibly including executed Chinese prisoners) do not permit me to recommend it to anyone, even if it were as well done technically and aesthetically as BW. (From what I’ve heard, it is not.) Many reputable museums have refused to book it for that reason, and I completely support that position.

You don’t say where you are located, but if Body Worlds is, or soon will be, in or near your city, I would recommend going to it instead of BTE. But if that is not an option, you must decide if BTE’s ethical problems are sufficiently serious in your view to outweigh the benefit of seeing it.

22

Heh. My high school went to see Body Worlds when it was in the Twin Cities. I recall quite a large group of us condensing around The Hurdler. We had quite a discussion about what his reaction would have been and what things he would have said if he had completed the jump and whacked his penis and testicles against the top of the hurdle, cause they were dangling pretty low…

23

As much as I’d like to not let this bother me, it’s something I keep coming back to in my head. It’s very unfortunate that the educational benefit of the exhibit is marred by unethical (by western standards) procurement of the cadavers.

Reminds me of the controversy connected to the Visible Human project, way back when, which stemmed from the public awareness of the cadaver’s identity as a convicted murderer. That was the most incredible biological study I have ever seen, though.

24

What I saw on the news was Bodies…The Exhibition (which opened Feb 1st in Cincinnati) and they showed close-ups. I wasn’t impressed by a number of them. Whether you call it finesse or I call it ratty, it was far from optimized. Nothing that was displayed couldn’t be duplicated by a special effects company. There is no ethical reason to display cadavers for public enlightenment beyond the draw of the macabre.

The test of the exhibit is whether it would draw enough patronage to be profitable if the bodies were not real. This is, after all, a money making venture. Or put another way, how many kids would bug their parents to see it if it was just another science fair showing replicated bodies.

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25

I’ve no doubt it looks better in person than it does on TV, but I think you’re missing the point. None of your special effects examples would be possible if people hadn’t already explored human anatomy in as much detail as these exhibits do. Those people are typically only medical professionals and the lot of us who aren’t in the medical field are still quite uninformed, yet curious, as to what’s truly going on beneath our skin. Why not give people the opportunity to things the coroner sees if it may educate them as to their own bodies? Sure, you could do that with fake models, but the “woah” factor from seeing the real thing leaves an impression.

As I mentioned in the OP, my kid thought they were fake, but was still really wanted to see it. Maybe she’s showing an interest in science? That would be cool.

26

I saw it last Christmas in Seattle with my nieces (then 11 and 7). The 7-year-old got a little bored, and kind of sped through the second half. The 11-year-old pretty much had to be dragged out, she was so fascinated. (She developed an odd fascination with kidneys, and had to locate them on every exhibit in order to orient herself to find all the other organs. She took a lot of ribbing when a kidney was stolen from the exhibit a week later - it was eventually returned.) It sounds like your daughter may be temperamentally more like the 11-year-old than the 7-year-old, so I might expect the latter reaction.

There is one room that you can skip if you want (the way the exhibit is laid out, they offer a “bypass” route), which has fetuses in various levels of development. They swear up and down that they were either miscarried or their mothers died accidentally while pregnant. Many of them had horrific defects (which is consistent with the idea that they miscarried, I guess). That particular room was extremely hard for me, as we had been unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant for over a year at that point. It was also one of the most interesting rooms in the exhibit. I won’t recommend one way or another whether you should view it, but just give you a heads-up warning so you can think about it.

Overall, I definitely recommend it, and I think it’s a great opportunity for your daughter to learn more about how bodies work.

27

That’s a stillbirth, I believe.
Hi, my name is Kat, and I work at the Carnegie Science Center here in Pittsburgh-where Bodies is currently on display. Having seen it a few times, I think the most appropriate term for me would be “surreal.” It’s weird, but in a good way.

The nudity didn’t bother me, what got to me was the above mentioned stillborns, and the cancerous tumors. No, there is no blood, but they do show the blood vessel system, tumors, as I stated above. The bodies do look strange in that they’re all dried out-that might be what one person meant by “ratty” looking.

The fetal development room can easily be skipped.

A few rules:
-NO photography whatsoever
-If you have a cellphone, please put it on silent, or turn it off
-No food, drink, or gum inside the exhibit.

Now, of course there’s no touching-except at the end. I don’t know if catsix took advantage of this, but we have a “touch table”, where you can hold various organs. There is, off the top of my head:
-a smoker’s lung
-a brain
-a heart
-a gallbladder
-a bone (I think it’s a shin bone)

(As for the bodies being unclaimed, the way I look at it is this way-at least these peoples’ remains are being used to educate, rather than being dumped in some mass grave. And unclaimed bodies have always been used as cadavers, pretty much)
All right then, if you have any other questions, feel free to contact me-PM, or e-mail, it doesn’t matter. (Oh, and the price only gets you into Bodies, but if you let me know you’re coming in advance, I’ll put some admission wristbands for you in WillCall, if you want. And TRY and avoid Saturdays and Sundays-at least during the day. The exhibit’s open until nine, so if you can’t make it on a week day, try the evening. Sats and Suns will often have a two hour wait or so, although it’s gotten better since the holidays are over)

Now, on a lighter note, yesterday one of us found a post-it note someone had left on the wall inside the exhibit:

Ummm, so you paid 22 bucks to something you think is sinful, thus supporting it, only to tell us what we’ve already heard?

28

I took my nine year old daughter to Body Worlds (II?) right after Christmas. She didn’t find it gross at all and, in fact, was dead bored about halfway through. Of course, it could have been because we took 2.5 hours to make our way through the exhibit.

Frankly, I’m just happy she got to see the nonsmoker’s/smoker’s/coal miner’s lungs (looks like I’m not the only one). It really made quite an impression on her. She wasn’t phased by the genitals on display, nor was she upset by the fetal development area FWIW.

I found that they seemed to have the layout set up so they started you off slowly before they got to the really far out stuff. By the time you got to the skinned figure skaters in the death spiral, you were sort of desensitized to it all. :stuck_out_tongue:

29

Here’s my problem, as a lover of science and a nurse-to-be, with using models - they’re too perfect. Real bodies don’t always have organs where you’d expect them, they’ve got odd growths - some benign, some dangerous - they’ve got a huge variation in “normal”. If all anyone ever saw was one or a dozen models, we’d get a very distorted vision of what we’re actually like. Is this really a problem outside medical schools? Well, probably not. Most of us can live a long healthy life without knowing what an anterior cruciate ligament is or what it really looks like. But if that’s the path we want to go down, then none of us save art historians really needs to see what original paintings look like - why don’t we just make a bunch of posters so every art museum can have a Mona Lisa? None of us, save the horticulturists, need to know what a real rose looks like, so lets replace all the plants in the botanic garden with silks - they’re sturdier than the real thing, so our costs will go way down.

No, no one *needs *to see real bodies. But I feel my life has been enriched by having an afternoon to marvel at the wonderful complexity and diversity of the human form first hand, instead of through a replica.

30

Well put, WhyNot.

31

Was that at Docklands? If it’s the one I’m thinking of, you’re right, the ‘exhibition’ side was really poorly done, which is why no reputable museum would agree to host it.

The proliferation of plastination exhibitions is an interesting chapter in the recent history of science museums. I do think they have a place in the inform/entertain spectrum, and it really is up to the individual hosting venues to decide how to go about supporting the exhibitions. Sometimes all it takes to go from ‘gruesome’ to ‘acceptable’ is an explainer/interpreter helping people feel more comfortable with the processes involved.