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Human bodies as exhibits?

Posted on October 20, 2010

The Exhibition dubbed “Myth of the Human Bodies” presents to the viewing public some x number of human bodies from real persons as they have undergone so-called plastination, a technique used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts.

The plastinates as these samples or specimens are called are on exhibit at Neo Babylon Building, 9 Bayani Road, AFP Oval. Taguig City and in order to view the presentation, an admission ticket costs P350 per person. Exhibition opens at 10:30 a.m. and closes at 08:30 p.m.

It might elude the appreciation of the average Filipino mind as to its much professed educational value. Few observations may have to be made, namely:

a) Nothing indicates that the Department of Health has authorized the display of these plastinated human bodies where they have been housed;
b) Neither is there any bulletin posted from the City Government of Taguig at the exhibition venue;
c) The usher/usherettes do not seem qualified to be able to answer questions from viewers on the samples or specimens;
d) The exhibition obviously failed to meet the criteria set in any ordinary scientific fair or medical exhibition (e.g. texts, labels, details, visual aids);
e) It is unclear if the local government unit concerned must have collected the prescribed rates of amusement tax from this exhibition;
f) In general, it drifted from its intended value for education, training or research to its simple profit motive.

Beyond its ordinary scientific value, there is even a much higher moral issue that may have yet to be confronted. It is of uncertain validity if there are existing laws that could have prevented this display of real human bodies to rake monetary profits. Nothing indicates that there is any agency of government that supervises the conduct of this exhibition. It seems, it was a purely commercial activity that no government agent has to monitor, supervise, or guide its operation.

The real human samples shown on display are said to have been donors – willing enough to donate their bodies after death – to that much-vaunted ‘ideological cause’ to promote science or medical education. But when in their numbers alone – the human plastinates in full bodies or dismembered body parts – could crowd the entire spaces of an entire building, one could be forced to reflect whether this could have been morally permissible especially from viewers historically honed to a particular religious belief in an ethical environment given to honoring the dead.

The question of whether human life is sacred is put to a serious test. When human corpses could be ‘manufactured’ as to become plastinates and could be intended for paid public display, then it is definitely an affront to the sanctify of the human being.

Indeed, there is more than meets the eye in this rather unique exhibition of human bodies. From where I stand, I strongly doubt if this kind of somewhat ‘pseudo anatomical exhibition’ fully satisfies the aims of educating the viewing public about health. Those who would donate their bodies to this so-called Body Worlds’ mission so they will be on public display at exhibition galleries throughout the world may have overlooked how far more ‘socially relevant’ they could have been had they better donated their organs to as many people as possible.

Certainly, this exhibit appears to have blurred the line between what is moral to what is commercial. And I tend to see the whole as betrayal of the Mission’s much-avowed claim of promoting science or medicine. By that count alone – 20 millions had come to see the exhibitions – simply mean that it has been worth a fortune to ‘manufacture’ human plastinates barring all moral or legal issues that could stand on its way.

What can the CBCP or pro-life advocacy groups say about this Philippine exhibition?

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