malvern-online.com - Critics question origin of bodies

Promoters of the exhibition “Our Body: The Universe Within” that is set to open this month at the Mid-America Museum in Hot Springs could be exhibiting the plasticized bodies of China’s persecuted victims, critics of corpse shows say.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has pressured one exhibitor, Premiere Exhibitions of Atlanta, Ga., into offering New York customers of “Bodies….The Exhibition” their money back after Cuomo said the company might be displaying “the remains of individuals that may have been tortured and executed in China,” an ABC News report May 29 said.

Cuomo said that “despite repeated denials” Premiere “had no way of knowing the true source of their human exhibits and no meaningful documentation to support their claims that the bodies had been donated for such a use.”

In an interview in February with ABC network’s 20/20 newsmagazine, former Premiere CEO Arthur Geller claimed the company used cadavers brought in from Dalian Medical University in China and not the bodies of executed people. The university’s president, however, said it had not provided the bodies, and Geller resigned his position, but remained with the company.

Premiere, a publicly traded company (NYSE: PRXI), bought the promoter of the Hot Springs show, The Universe Within Touring Company, LLC, of Baltimore, Md., in December 2007, according to Premiere’s fiscal year 2008 filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The companies are apparently operating as separate entities as of June 2008. They promote separate shows, have separate web sites and each company has its own medical director, according to their respective web sites.

The promoter of the Hot Springs show says on a frequently asked questions page of its Internet site, “All of the anatomical specimens contained in ‘Our Body: The Universe Within’ originate from China and have been provided for the exhibit consistent with the laws of China.”

“The anatomical specimens are not owned by the exhibitors, but are provided by a Chinese foundation to promote educational and medical research of the human body,” the site says.

Financial analysts say Premiere alone has paid more than $25 million to its provider of anatomical specimens in the five years since it branched into the corpse show business from its “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” shows, which entertainment sector financial analysts say had been moderately successful.

The Universe Within site continues, “While we do not have the specific identity of each anatomical specimen, they have been donated through medical schools and other research facilities in China to promote education, science and medical research of the human body.”

In another section of its frequently asked questions, the Universe Within Touring Company encourages potential visitors to distinguish the bodies in its exhibits from cadavers.

“It is far more accurate to refer to the actual human bodies exhibited in Our Body: The Universe Within as specimens,” the section says. “A human specimen is first preserved in accordance with standard mortuary science. The specimen then undergoes a polymer preservation process to be readied for the anatomical presentation, research and education. These specimens are intended for anatomical research, education, study and preservation.”

Critics of corpse shows say that stateside promoters lack death certificates and consent forms for their specimens. They say exhibitors claim that bodies have been donated, but none have reportedly produced a single death certificate or consent form.

Harry Wu, director of the Laogai Research Foundation, which monitors human rights violations in China, was quoted in the San Diego Union Tribune as saying, “China has thousands of executions a year and the government never releases any information about them – even the families aren’t given notice about the execution until after the execution.”

Wu, who calls himself a capitalist and a practicing Catholic, said he spent 19 years in a forced labor camp before being released and making his way to the Unites States.

According to the Epoch Times, an independent newspaper in New York City that specializes in coverage of China, it is common knowledge that China is presently the world’s largest human organ-trading center. Patients from all over the world come to China for organ transplant operations, the newspaper says. It also says that China is the largest body-processing center in the world and that the hub of this industry is located in the city of Dalian, near three concentration camps where prisoners are routinely beaten to death and executed by gunshots to the back of the head or neck.

Epoch Times columnist and Falun Gong expert Zhang Tianliang in a March 29, 2006, edition of the newspaper said that, “Traditionally, the Chinese would display the bodies of those who have committed terrible crimes in the streets or hang them up on flag poles for a few days as a warning to people.

“The Chinese are very particular about ‘preserving the whole body of a dead person;’ it is unlikely that family members would allow the bodies of their loved ones to be stripped of skins and exhibited. Hence it is difficult to get donations under normal circumstances.

“For the past six years, the Communist regime has carried out an extermination policy towards Falun Gong practitioners whereby ‘those beaten to death are considered as committing suicide,’ ‘no investigations are made into their identities, cremate their bodies straight away,’ leading to the confirmed deaths of nearly 3000 practitioners that we can identify by name. Yet the actual number of those killed by torture is far more than that. At the same time, because family members of Falun Gong practitioners have no means to seek redress for injustice suffered, the bodies of dead Falun Gong practitioners have become the most likely source for body specimens.

“Under such circumstances, it is highly likely that there are Falun Gong practitioners’ bodies amongst the many body specimens.”

Corpse show promoters have a link to the city of Dalian that dates back to at least 1996. That was the year the inventor of the plastination process, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, accepted a visiting professorship at Dalian Medical University, according to von Hagens’ biography on his Internet site.

In 1993, von Hagens founded the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany, which produced the plastinated specimens he debuted at his first corpse show in Japan in 1995. That show, known as “Body Worlds,” drew over three million visitors, press reports say. It was put on to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Japanese Anatomical Society.

Between 1996 and 2001, von Hagens operated a plastination lab in Dalian affiliated with the Dalian Medical University and Dr. Hong-Jin Sui, a Chinese medical doctor.

According to von Hagens’ web site biography: “In 2001, he founded a private company, the Von Hagens Dalian Plastination Ltd., in Dalian, China, which currently employs a staff of 250.”

Von Hagens has reportedly just built a third plastination facility in Poland, but his main body processing facility apparently remains in Dalian.

Plastination is not a cheap or quick process, according to his web site. Plastination and preparation of a human body can take up to one year and cost as much as $42,500 U.S. His critics say this is why he conducts most of his preparation in China, a low-labor-cost country.

As does Sui, reported to be the former protégé of von Hagens and the former business manager at von Hagens’ production plant. According to a 2004 report in China Daily, Sui and von Hagens parted company with Sui setting up the Biological Plastination Company, Ltd, of the Dalian Medical Institute in 2000.

Today, Sui is general manager of Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique Co., Ltd., a high-tech company with about 40 employees in Dalian which “engages in research and innovation of plastination technique and the production, preservation, and exhibition of plastinated biotic specimens,” according to its web site.

Von Hagens says he sources his bodies ethically. Many, he says on his web site, come from a list of over 8,500 donors from Europe and the United States. He says he no longer uses corpses from China for exhibition.

Cuomo says Dalian Hoffen acquired the bodies it licensed to Premiere and other exhibitors indirectly from the Chinese Bureau of Police, which deemed them unclaimed at death.

ABC News reported May 21 that Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) has introduced a bill co-sponsored by 21 members of Congress that would prohibit the importation of any plastinated human body part into this country.

“This is a human rights issue about affording human dignities to people around the world,” Akin told ABC News. “We cannot verify the source of each body coming from China, so we decided the best approach was to say that in our country, you cannot import plastinated bodies.”

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), a co-sponsor of the bill, said, “China’s record on human rights should give us pause in any issue involving human remains imported from that country.”

Akin is also critical of the U.S. Customs Service, which has said that since the plastination process changes the nature of the human remains, plastinated body parts can be imported as plastic objects, not as human bodies.

“That is the same rhetoric that oppressive governments around the world have used to dehumanize people. This is a human body. Just because you infuse plastic into it does not change that,” he said.

Akin’s bill would not affect current corpse shows because the remains are already here. It does not single out any particular exhibit or company that performs plastination. Under the bill, only bodies donated and plastinated in the United States would be legal to display. Penalty for importation of plastinated bodies would be a fine of up to $10,000 per violation.

Akins’ bill would affect Corcoran Laboratories, a company in Michigan that imports plastinated body parts from China and advertises them for sale to the public on its Internet site. Corcoran also sells the plastinated parts to medical schools for teaching purposes.