"I don't think you're wrong to think that," Michael Sappol, a historian at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., and the author of "A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth Century America," told me later by phone. "You're not wrong to be amazed, to feel, This is my body. And you're not wrong to look at a dead body and think, This is death."

Sappol speculates that plastination exhibits are alluring in part because "we live in a sea of body images that are constantly trying to trump each other in terms of novelty or beauty. Because we can't directly see into our own interior, there could be nothing more novel." Yet we also live in a culture intent on hiding death; and these exhibits flaunt it. "You're seeing yourself, but you're also seeing a monster at the same time."

Plastination exhibits follow a long tradition of spectacular anatomical displays that channel this basic curiosity. These range from dissecting humans in a public "anatomical theater" in the 1600s, often for the pleasure of civic dignitaries, to grotesque cadaver exhibits in the dime museums of 19th century New York. Creeping alongside this continuum, however, have been debates (and sometimes riots) over the provenance and rights of those bodies, similar to the arguments erupting now around "The Universe Within." After all, it was common for 19th century doctors to resort to grave robbing for their specimens -- only because there was an inadequate supply of executed criminals and unclaimed vagrants, who were fair game.

In America today, the widely revered principle to adjudicate the use of cadavers is informed consent: Donors must sign off on precisely how their bodies will be used. This is effectively what Fiona Ma is battling for. Sappol calls enforcing it with respect to exhibits like "The Universe Within" a matter of justice, saying, "It's very unlikely that von Hagens or these plastination people can meet any kind of informed consent." That is, it's unlikely a man somewhere in China volunteered specifically to be the skinless fellow riding a bike. Sappol also cited reports of organ harvesting from executed Chinese prisoners.

But Sappol admits he's ambivalent about the idea of applying that standard retroactively. Informed consent, like all other concepts in bioethics, is relatively recent, having arisen only after donating one's body to science became a prestigious, upper-middle-class bit of altruism rather than a haphazardly forced arrangement for the destitute. "Every major anatomical museum would have to take things off display," Sappol said. Just two years ago, the skeleton of a slave in Waterbury, Conn., which had been turned into a medical model by his physician owner and displayed in a local museum for generations, was finally given a proper burial. (Connecticut also commissioned an operetta to honor the slave.)

The ethical controversy surrounding "The Universe Within" may undermine any esoteric argument about art, science and the value of wonder. The excesses of the exhibit itself certainly can't be justified for their power to instill reverence for the human body if the curators have so basically betrayed that reverence by hijacking bodies and then lying about it. The paradox is, an exhibit that so forcefully inspires curiosity about "the body" also seems to have a strange power to neuter curiosity about the individual bodies staring us in the face.

So it may turn out I was complicit in the handiwork of body-trafficking hucksters, ponying up $15 and shuffling around the gallery with my jaw dropped, exclaiming over how marvelous it all was. And I can't say I don't feel pretty filthy about that. The things that amazed me most, while still amazing, are also now vaguely haunting. That flank steak, for one. Or consider the hot fuchsia filigree of arteries that the curators of "The Universe Within" had extracted from a leg to be strewn across the blue velour of a rectangular display case. Consider how the filaments still hold their leg shape, like a knit sock that has nearly worn away. But also consider that it was a toddler's leg. And a few short wisps of its artery had flecked free of the mass and were, as I stood there gawking at it, static-clinging to the velour -- just kicking around, like bits of a cheap feather boa after a costume party.

Recent Stories