Lawmaker targets exhibits like ‘Bodies’

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

By Sally Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

At last people are coming up with a common sense approach to this complicated moral issue.

According to this Post-Gazette report, Pennsylvania state Representative Michael E. Fleck is preparing a bill that will govern exhibits of human corpses and body parts, including Bodies … The Exhibition, now showing at Carnegie Science Center. 

The bill would ban the commercial exhibition of human cadavers without written consent from the deceased or their next of kin that clearly states the person’s intent to be used in a profit-making enterprise.

This bill would apparently be similar to one just approved in California.

The plastinated human body display at the Science Center which has been making the rounds from city to city has created quite a stir here in Pittsburgh.  Elaine Catz quit her job at the Science Center in protest because there was no significant documentation to confirm that the bodies on display were there as donations freely offered or otherwise legitimately obtained.  They came from China and there is concern that at least some of them were executed prisoners whose bodies may have been used against their will. 

There has been a fair degree of local discussion about the display; but local dignitaries, including the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, have approved the display for its considerable educational values.  One cannot help but wonder whether commercial interests have had the upper hand, however, and whether this might actually be a more complicated issue than one might have assumed at first glance.

Some Second Thoughts

Michael J. Lewis wrote a review of the Body Worlds exhibit for Commentary in January 2007 (“Body and Soul“).  Bodies…the Exhibition is just one of a number of other similar exhibits since Body Worlds first appeared in 1995.  Ken Meyers discussed the Commentary article and the broader topic with Mr. Lewis in the Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 88 (November/December 2007).

One of the points Mr. Lewis makes is that our culture basically accepts a mechanistic worldview.  Ultimately, the display of human bodies as mechanisms without any sense of reverence for the human beings they represent, and the overwhelming easy-going acceptance of these bodies as mere physical apparatuses by the audiences, as if they really are just plastic models, just goes to show how far our society has gone in accepting a purely mechanistic worldview, argues Mr. Lewis. 

Another one of the points Mr. Lewis makes is that our society tends to be horrified by the realities of decay and suffering.  By presenting bodies highlighted in bright colors and with an antiseptically clean appearance, there is almost a cartoonish quality to these displays that cannot elicit a holistic human response to the reality of the human body.  The irony is that violence may have been the cause of death for some of these people, yet the horror of that fact will be either disguised or eliminated, satisfying our desire to tune out suffering.  

When I led youth groups for the YMCA in the 1960’s, a favorite trip was to the Wister Institute anatomical museum in Philadelphia to view their collection of selected body parts.  This unique environment created memorable teachable moments.  Education is not just what you see but the interaction that occurs between the participants.  In those moments of viewing real flesh, there was a sense of contact with the real people represented by those specimens, and sometimes an inclination towards identification with them.  And there was a sense of reverence for those people, somewhat like at a typical viewing in a funeral home: we were outgoing and alert, but also with a quiet demeanor. 

I may be wrong, but I do not think this sense of respect for real people is fostered by the plastinated body displays.  But do we need to burden ourselves with a sense of guilt and try to make ourselves think we really ought to feel differently about these bodies?  Perhaps we should just consider that these bodies have been transformed to the point where they have been objectified and dehumanized and therefore are more like model airplanes than flesh and blood human beings. 

If you had the opportunity to see an embalmed Egyptian mummy when you were a child, how did you feel about it?  Did you sense that the embalmed body was a human body to be treated with special respect, or simply an object like any other object in the display?

Don’t our minds see these preserved bodies as something different than human bodies?  From one perspective they could be considered bodies embalmed in plastic. But from another perspective we might well say that with so much plastic they have ceased to be human bodies and have become manikins.  When a body is so transformed by embalming technology that it loses the ability to evoke an empathetic response - a response that enables you to see yourself in their position, a sense of identification with them - I think that body has taken on an objective quality that means it serves primarily for education or entertainment. 

Here’s how one lighthearted blogger put it after viewing the Body Worlds exhibit with her husband:

But the bodies… oh the bodies. I expected to be slightly grossed out. I expected The Mr. to turn pale but they just looked… like models? I guess plastination makes people look like (wait for it) plastic. So, I felt like I was just looking at fake models of bodies. I mean, if I took a second to think that its an actual human body then I kind of got the heebie jeebies.

Yes, the origins of these bodies is a serious concern.  But the level of respect for the actual human body can also serve as a barometer of the moral and spiritual health of our society.  

Some of the questions we ought to ask are:

Are these plastinated bodies human bodies, or are they more like manikins?

Does it make any difference? 

What should we do about it?

I think Representative Fleck has made a reasonable proposal for dealing with this complicated issue: Let each individual decide the fate of their own body.  We are deciding the kind of future society we will pass on to our heirs by the choices we make today.  We should welcome the opportunity to share in that process and accept the burden of making those decisions.

Human bodies can and will be used for all kinds of entertainment and artistic possibilities in the future.  We should not underestimate the human imagination.   

We need to regulate how commercial enterprises are going to develop this new arena, including how much documentation they will be required to supply for the human bodies they use in their displays.  It is a matter of common sense to require appropriate documentation.

We sign permission forms for everything else.  It is not too much to require that we must give our permission if we want to allow our own body to be used in commercial enterprises after we are dead.  Don’t we already have to do that if we want to leave our body for medical uses such as organ donation?  

More Pittsburgh coverage just after this post was first published: 
 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Panel debates ethics of ‘Bodies’ exhibit

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: ‘Bodies’ exhibit called ‘unethical,’ educational

Will We Divide Between Fear and Hope?

This coming presidential election is shaping up to be a contest between our fears and our hopes.

There are so many ways to capitalize on fear.  Here is yet another:

Charles Krauthammer laments the rise of John McCain, but then lays the blame on George Bush, saying…

Mr. Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He’s kept us safe. He’s the original apostate sheriff.

So George Bush has kept us safe, has he?

Has Charles Krauthammer forgotten about 9/11, an event that was not entirely unpredictable since it was the second attempt on the twin towers?

What George Bush did do was use the failures of the past to declare a war on terror and then use that “war” to justify all sorts of over-reaching of his presidential powers in many areas, all in the name of that war.

What is Charles Krauthammer trying to do by telling us that George Bush has kept us safe?

It’s the same thing we can expect the Republican campaign to do as it begins to rally its support for John McCain - to tell us we will only be safe if Republicans are in control.

There are lots of ways to respond to this claim.  Is it true?  Is it probable?  What has happened in the past?  What are the differences between Bush, McCain, Obama, and Clinton?  Do presidents really have much to do with the effectiveness of national security, or are military and other civil servants the major influence? Etc.

What I am more interested in, however, is the use of scare tactics on the American people, since they are the ones who elect the president.  And claims such as this one by Charles Krauthammer contribute to that kind of manipulation.

Why make such an outrageous claim?

For one thing, there is still nearly another year to go in President Bush’s term.  But Krauthammer is betting that nothing will happen before then.

He is not talking about American soldiers on active duty; so the “we” who are safe are not those of us who identify with those who are in that poorly planned military mission in the Middle East. 

He is not talking about our lost American prestige around the globe; so he is not talking about the security that comes from the solidarity of support we receive in the family of nations. 

Krauthammer just means we have not been attacked on American soil since 9/11 when he says George Bush has kept us safe.

But since, as FBI Director Robert Mueller said, “terrorists operate seamlessly across borders and continents, aided by sophisticated communications technologies…; and they patiently and methodically plan and prepare their attacks,” there is a reasonable likelihood that we will be attacked on American soil sooner or later.   

And since many indicators suggest that the next president may well be Democratic, Krauthammer is playing the odds that an attack on American soil will occur within nine years from now but after 2008, and therefore that attack can be “blamed” on the next Democratic president! 

And of course, if there is no attack in the first term and this Democratic president is re-elected (since exposure favors the incumbent), then the odds are even greater that an attack will occur in the second term.  Demonizing the Democrats is thereby a gamble about whether an attack is more likely in 2008 or during the following eight year span. 

Assuming the Democrats win the election, Krauthammer and the Republicans will have a large window in which to claim Americans made a big mistake in rejecting the Republican candidate, if a terrorist attack on American soil does occur.

Now let’s just say McCain does win in November 2008.   And let’s say we are attacked on American soil during McCain’s term of office.  Will anyone start blaming him?   Who in their right mind would do that? 

So why would anyone in their right mind think that a president from either party would be careless about national defense?

Only Republicans allow themselves to get away with this stupid argument.