Slavery or human cadavers? My husband and I were torn between the two for our May 17 road trip to southwest Ohio. Ultimately, "Bodies... The Exhibition" won the coin toss over the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, so onward we went to the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, which is hosting the controversial exhibit through Sept. 1.
The terminal itself was built 75 years ago by seven railroads and has since become an Art Deco landmark. These days, it's drawn more attention than usual because of the Bodies exhibit. An AP story just released today (May 21) stated republican Missouri congressman Todd Akin, concerned about the source of plasticized cadavers in such exhibitions, has introduced a bill that would outlaw the import of bodies for them. The bill now has about 20 co-sponsors, including Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio.
The exhibit has been around for more than two years, and is being held simultaneously in different places, including Las Vegas. Its purpose is to give the general public the opportunity to view the human body in its entirety, just like medical students have for years, in order to gain a better appreciation and understanding of just how amazing we physiologically are.
But the bodies used for Bodies, produced by Premier Exhibitions, were obtained through the Dalian Medical University plastination laboratories in the People's Republic of China. Accusations have claimed the bodies may not have been given freely, and that not enough proof exists to determine that. Some have protested the Cincy exhibit.
Premier Exhibitions claims legal documentation provided by the university "states that only the bodies of people who are deceased from natural causes have been included" in these exhibits. The Cincy museum stands by its decision to present the exhibit, noting its specially convened panelists of area doctors, philosophers, legal experts and the like "unanimously agreed it was important to present this extraordinary educational experience..."
Aside from the controversy, Bodies does everything it sets out to do - informs, inspires, and, perhaps most effectively of all, fascinates. The exhibit starts out with the basics - full skeletons. It then progresses by highlighting more complex organ and structural styems and their relation to each other. We saw muscle layers. Nerves teased out individualy and displayed from head to toe. A process using liquid silicone rubber preserves at the cellular level so that things like the tiniest blood vessels can be seen. A heart really is about as big as a fist. The brain really is folded beautifully into the skull. Muscles layer over each other and tendons weave through to bone. And, aside from the smaller organs and tissues encased in glass, you can get as close as you want to the full-sized adult bodies without touching them.
Bodies doesn't say how the "specimens" died, but things from a breast with a cancerous lump to a hardened artery are there.
Reading material next to the displays and on the walls offers interesting lessons. Male sperm counts begin to decrease at age 35, for instance, and babies are born with more bones than adults. Docents are around to point out other things, like the fact that women's hips are wider than men's (makes sense, but it's so much easier to understand when you actually see them practically side by side).
One room, closed and attendence-optional, also contains fetuses and deceased infants, one of which had a cleft pallet and another Spina Bifida. The difference in size between fetuses that were 7 weeks and 8 weeks along was striking, and all offered incredible clarity and realization in terms of development.
I thought the one drawback to the exhibit was its overemphasis on lung cancer caused by smoking. I first saw a cancerous lung, in ye olde jar of fermaldehyde, in 7th grade. Been there, done that. But Bodies went further by offering a clear plastic box, about waist high, with which to toss your smokes and start kicking the habit then and there. Smoking causes cancer. Alright already. We get it. There was no box for, say, alcohol bottles or hypodermic needles. I was more into learning about the stuff I'd never seen and didn't necessarily know about in terms of disease and disorders.
At the end of the exhibit are books for visitors to leave comments. Along with my praises, I included the above criticism. Someone else before me evidently had a sense of humor though, because he/she wrote "ANYONE HUNGRY?" Which I thought wasn't too far off target because, it's disturbing to admit it, but many of the muscles did bring to mind steak. Perhaps the exhibit has/will influence a rise in vegetarianism?
Bodies... The Exhibit at Cincy (you'll pay way more in Vegas) costs $23 for adults, $15 for children and $19 for seniors. The museum's Omnimax Theater is also offering (for an additional cost) an accompanying "The Human Body" movie, featuring a day in the life focusing on biological processes that happen without our control and often unnoticed. Paristalsis, anyone?
Exhibition hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Cinncinnati Museum Center is right along I-75. For more information visit www.cincymuseum.org.
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