'BODIES . . . The Exhibit' is Gruesome Show of Unidentified Dead

[ Warning: Graphic Photo Below ]

"BODIES . . . The Exhibit" is a traveling exhibit of human body parts now showing in New York City that puts 22 cadavers and 260 body specimens on public display. The twist is that this show-and-tell exhibit hopes to make a profit. The tickets of admission are not even as cheap as a movie—$24.50 for adults and $18.50 for children.

Apart from the ethical issue of exploiting the dead to make money, there is growing controversy over the fact that all the bodies came from China. According to Arnie Geller, president of Premier Exhibitions Inc., his company paid millions for the specimens from the Dalian Medical School in China. He claimed that the bodies were either unclaimed or unidentified.

Bodies and Organs May Have Come from China's Prisons or Concentration Camps

However, explanations about the origin of the corpses are contradictory and are being investigated by human rights groups and concerned medical health professionals and doctors. Some are concerned that the exhibit's bodies and organs might have come from China's prisons or concentration camps, and without the consent of the dead or their families.

Falun Gong practitioner Wang Bin, 44 years old from Helongjian province, was tortured to death. His heart and brain were removed without consent after his murder. Many Falun Gong practitioners are missing, possibly murdered and ending up as unidentified deaths. (The Epoch Times)

The Chinese communist regime is known to execute thousands of prisoners every year and reportedly performs organ harvesting on their bodies. In 2004 alone, the regime carried out 3,400 executions, according to reports from Amnesty International.

Organs Harvested in Concentration Camp in China

Recently, there are also disturbing reports of a large concentration camp in northeastern China that harvests organs from detained Falun Gong practitioners and sells them for profit. Friends of Falun Gong, a human rights group, has compiled and reported identifiable cases of victims who had their organs illegally harvested.

According to reports from NTD Television, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners and human rights supporters gathered at the White House earlier this week as a part of the global effort to shut down one of these camps, called Sujiatun.

Already, there has been a strong public demand for a government investigation.

Serious Questions About Bodies Exhibit

In a letter to New York Health Department authorities expressing concerns about the legality of such an exhibit, Keith R. Jacques, the General Counsel to the Anatomical Committee of the Associated Medical Schools of New York State, raised some serious concerns. According to Jacques, many aspects of the cadaver exhibit violate standard medical practices, including the lack of a licence.

Members of the Committee are boycotting the exhibit and refusing media interviews so as not to contribute to public interest in the exhibit.

The exhibit, which is one of five of its kind traveling the world from city to city, displays corpses of Chinese people preserved through "plastination," a process which preserves the human body by replacing bodily fluids with reactive polymers (plastic).

The exhibits are not always welcomed in the cities they visit. San Francisco's City Supervisor, Fiona Ma, who is also Chinese-American, passed an ordinance banning one of these exhibits from returning to the city after its brief run there last year.

Please see Corpses in U.S. Human Body Exhibition Come from Dalian, China for further details.