SEATTLE – Controversy about the origins of Chinese bodies on display at Bodies…The Exhibition hasn’t stopped crowds from packing in the pricey show at an exhibition hall in downtown Seattle.  

The debate essentially focuses on whether the educational benefit of viewing the bodies outweighs the ethical consideration that the dead never gave consent for their remains to be exhibited. It’s not an issue that has prevented students of all ages -- from 5th graders to future massage therapists -- from flocking in droves to the downtown Seattle exhibition hall.

The exhibit uses human remains preserved through a polymer preservation process that shows the complete body, including internal anatomy. The Chinese laboratories prepare the skinned bodies and body parts with “plastination”, a process body water and fats are replaced with liquid silicone rubber.

Fifth-grade teacher Cary Ursino from the Kirkland Seventh Day Adventist School said that out of her class of 26 students, three parents refused permission for the tour.

“One of them was for political reasons and two other parents thought it was too graphic for that age,” she said.

ELLEN LIANG / KING5.com

The touching station, especially popular with children, allows them to hold organs, such as a brain.

Parents were asked to look at the Web site before granting permission. Teachers are given comprehensive educational guides for the various class levels so they can prep the students beforehand.

Nudity hasn’t been an issue, and parents haven't refused permission on religious grounds.

“Parents are probably more hung up about nudity than children,” said education director Cheryl Mure.

It’s also a chance for younger students to see real bodies from the medical side, sometimes before their sex education classes, she added.

The students are told beforehand to show respect -- no crude jokes, pointing and giggling.

“When I was a boy we never talked about the body,” said medical director Roy Glover. “The body was often associated with something sexual. We try to change that and talk openly about things that are of concern. It’s an ideal way to engage in discussion all health-related issues, including sex.”

For many students, the most fascinating exhibit is the fetal gallery, which comes at the end of the exhibit so some may opt to skip it because of  displays of babies with deformities.

There is also a touch station, where people can handle organs, such as a brain and kidney, as well as bones.

Some 8^th-grade students, also from the Kirkland Seventh-Day Adventist School, said the most surprising things they learned were:

“I didn’t know that we had so many arteries.”

“That a woman has all the same number of eggs she was born with.”

“That you can’t change lungs (back to their natural state) after you smoke.”  

The lungs of a smoker is one of the most popular and perhaps influential of the displays. Smokers are even encouraged to dispose of their cigarettes in a Plexiglass bin.

“Most people don’t appreciate how complicated the body  is, like how many blood vessels there are in the body, so kids can understand the various factors that influence the health,” Glover said. 

The controversy

Organizer, Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions, has loaned the cadavers from the Dalian Medical School in China and has said its contract guarantees the bodies are not executed prisoners, as some protesters have suggested. They are said to be unclaimed, unidentified bodies that have become the property of the school for research. Therefore obtaining consent wasn’t possible.

In Seattle, the two most vocal opponents are Charlotte LeFevre and Philip Lipson, a couple who own the Museum of Mysteries in Seattle. They are filing a lawsuit against Premier Exhibitions, complaining that the exhibition violates the anatomical gift act, which prohibits the sale of tissue.  

KING5.com

Torso muscles are displayed on this body from Bodies...The Exhibition.

“If these were all Jewish or blacks, or Native American, it just wouldn’t happen. This might play into our apathy for the Chinese,” LeFevre said. “We are all for education but not at the expense of the unconsenting dead and exploitation of a cultural group.”

Though she said she hasn’t heard protests from Seattle’s Chinese-American community she pointed out that last year San Francisco enacted a law prohibiting the commercial public display of dead bodies without proper consent, due to an outcry from its Chinese-American community.

“We practically begged the Seattle City Council to enact a similar legislation,” LeFevre said.

Also, last year the Florida Anatomical Board voted not to allow a "Bodies" exhibition to in Tampa but that didn't stop the exhibition from proceeding.

In defense, chief medical advisor for the show, Roy Glover said in an email:

“The company has followed all of the written domestic and international laws that govern how human bodies are to be legally obtained for educational and research purposes and in addition they have taken every possible step to insure that the bodies and other specimens in the exhibition are displayed in a dignified and respectful way.

“The education that they provide the public is long overdue…Such study allows people to understand that their bodies need to be cared for, that many of the choices they make on a day to day basis can have either positive or negative consequences on their personal bodily health.”

Although there are plans by Premier Exhibitions to set up donations programs in the United States, these would be aimed more at encouraging organ donors, rather than to obtain American bodies for exhibition, Glover said.

Glover also said removing facial skin helps preserve anonymity of the bodies.

ELLEN LIANG / KING5.com

A woman's body is cut in cross sections.

Bodies…The Exhibition is not the first project of its kind. The preservation procedure was first developed a German doctor, Gunther von Hagens, whose Body Worlds exhibition has also been touring internationally. The company says it is the only anatomical exhibition that relies on donors, who have expressly willed their bodies to be used for educational purposes.

Apart from a small number of acquisitions from anatomical collections and anatomy programs, all the exhibited specimens were obtained through a body donation program started in 1983 by Dr. von Hagens.

But Body Worlds has aroused controversy because of the creativity of its displays. News articles and blogs have described them as more graphic, such as a woman who died before childbirth with the infant still inside her, or even "macabre" such as a “corpse balancing on three balls while holding aloft organs plucked from his torso.”

In comparison, Bodies...The Exhibition displays some bodies in athletic motion but takes no further creative license.

Premier Exhibitions, a publicly traded company and has attracted more than 2 million people to its Bodies exhibit since it opened in 2004, charging $25 a ticket for adults and $16 for children. It opened Sept. 30 in Seattle and is scheduled to run through December, but due to its popularity could be extended by six months.

The company expects some 400,000 visitors during its Seattle run.