Dead Bodies as Art: Is it a Carnival Act or a Medical Display

When the Bodies Exhibit was first introduced there was a great controversy. Some accepted the cut up corpses as being an artistic expression while others fount the bodies on exhibit to be quite disturbing. Personally, I believe that there is a time and a place for everything.

Recently while walking about in New York I was confronted several times with the life sized pictures of corpses on the sides of the City Buses advertising the exhibit and inviting folks to come and see the dead bodies. This public exhibit although it might be fascinating I believe is out of place.

When I was a teen I remember there being in a hospital lab fetuses that were in baby food sized jars. These were not in the public viewing area and I was only invited to take a quick glimpse as a person who was doing volunteer work there as a Candy Striper. The general public did not have access to this area nor did I without having been invited to look. It was very interesting to see the early formation of life.

Many years later, as a pre med student, I visited Einstein Medical Center in the Bronx along with other potential doctoral students. Throughout the halls there were various body parts in cases on display and shown as cross sections. This was a medical school and the time and place I believed was appropriate to show these displays of the human body.

We took a tour of the facilities which included a room where dead bodies were studied. Muscle structure, organ placement and body systems ere examined. The bodies were either donated or were unknown persons. The tour guide explained how each body was treated with respect and given a proper send off when the study was completed. They were not just bodies, they were people, people who had died.

The display on exhibit of skinned bodies I believe is rather horrid and irreverent. The display is no better than a carnival sideshow and should not be on display. There is no respect for human life being shown in this manner. The common man has the right to know what doctors and medical students see but this does not seem to me to be the right time or place.

Imagine that one of these bodies was your parent, your brother, your child. It could be one og your Uncles, aunts cousins or Grandparents. What if it was your next door neighbor? What if you went missing and one of the bodies was you! Do you find that idea to be relaxing or disturbing? I believe whole thing is wrong and I do not want to go to see it. I do not appreciate being forced to see the posed dead corpses without having been asked, floating past my view on the side of public transportation.

Why is everyone being forced to experience this through the advertisements? Children, adults, serial killers.. Anybody in the street is exposed. Please. Don't force me to view what I would prefer not to see. Death will come to us all one day. I don't want to have to be exposed to it without having been asked if I wanted to be.