When I entered the exhibit, the first thought to enter my mind was sliced prosciutto.

Why?

Because I was staring at preserved human cadavers being displayed in “BODIES… The Exhibition” at the South Street Seaport.

The exhibition allows visitors to walk among corpses preserved through a process (referred to as “plastination”) that fills their tissue spaces with a liquid silicone rubber. The bodies are then dissected (preparing a single body can take 3,000 and 5,000 hours) and posed to display the intricate workings of the skeletal, muscular, reproductive and other systems.

These mystery men and women – relieved of their skin, some of them sliced into halves and thirds – join the more than 250 human organs and partial-body specimens that make up the exhibit.

Various body parts help illustrate for the public the ravages of disease and poor lifestyle choices: the blackened lungs of a smoker placed near the pale lungs of a non-smoker, a normal liver next to a liver sick with cirrhosis, the healthy breasts of a woman next to a breast crippled by cancer.

In the nervous-system room, a skinned cadaver strikes a pose reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s famous sculpture, “The Thinker.” The top of his skull is removed to reveal the brain as he contemplates another brain on the table before him.

In the circulatory room, a body is reduced to its blood vessels – a vast labyrinth of crimson tubes and filaments.

In the fetal-development room, placards explain birth defects afflicting three of the fetuses displayed behind glass: spina bifida, anencephaly and visceral hernia. (A sign also explains that the deceased – ranging from 18 days to 24 weeks – all died from complications during pregnancy, not from abortions.)

While the notion of displaying the dead for profit is bound to provoke controversy, some critics say this particular exhibit is exceptionally troubling. That is because many medical ethicists and human rights advocates are questioning whether the show’s specimens were legally obtained.

Arnie Geller, the president of Premier Exhibitions Inc. – the company that spent $25 million to lease the cadavers from the Chinese Medical Dalian University – insists that the human remains are those of the poor, the unclaimed or the unidentified.

However, those opposed cite the Chinese government’s poor human rights record and the medical establishment’s practice of recycling the organs of executed prisoners.

In the November 2005 New York Times article “Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste,” Harry Wu, the executive director of the LaoGai Research Foundation (an organization that documents abuses in China’s penal system) was quoted saying that officials from Dalian University had been previously implicated in the use of executed prisoners for commercial purposes.

Lack of consent is not the only issue surrounding these anatomical exhibits. Some simply state that it is inappropriate to parade sliced up human bodies for public view. Supporters argue, however, that the unique presentation of the human form offered by the exhibits is a valuable educational experience.

I was curious what those at the actual exhibit had to say.

“I feel that people are undereducated when it comes to their bodies,” said Roger Price, a broker on Wall Street. We were standing near the lung exhibit that quotes, “On average, you lose 3 hours and 45 minutes off your life for every cigarette pack you smoke. This exhibit forces people to understand their bodies and hopefully encourages them to live healthier lives.”

Another woman in the fetal-development room had a different take.

“This grotesque charade is not about education at all. It’s about money,” said Rhonda, a registered nurse in Manhattan. She was fiercely adamant that the show desecrated the human body for mere profit. “This is all one extraordinarily successful entertainment show.”

It is difficult for me to take a side. On one hand, the exhibit was extremely enlightening and did encourage me to take a greater interest in taking care of my body. However, it is a bit disconcerting to read public statements saying that Premier’s goal is to generate at least $2 million in profits for each show.

Adding that to the question of where and how these bodies were collected makes the exhibition look less informative.

Whatever people believe, the main question in my mind is: Is it OK to learn from these bodies?

Originally published Dec. 6, 2009 in The Observer