Körperwelten

My beloved Ernst,

I’m sorry for the long delay, but Tilia had a lot of work to do the last weeks and doesn’t want me to write about her pathetic efforts to make her computer do want she wants it to do. It’s funny. They have so many more possibilities to achieve data, analyze data, store data, they can make some tiny silicium chips do their work for them and still they complain how difficult science can be.
Last time Tilia was really pissed off because the computer refused to analyze something rather simple (she fixed it later and, if you ask me, it was entirely her fault…) she created a taxonomy game and posted it at SMRT. Maybe you’ll like it.
But now it’s weekend and she is almost seriously thinking about spending half an hour on the dark side tomorrow. Well, as dark as a bunch of clergymen can be, there must be a reason why they wear black…
I don’t know if you have heard about the Körperwelten exhibition by Gunther von Hagens. The controversy is already several years old, I think the first of these exhibitions was opened in 1997, but the first big ones were opened in 2003. He shows plastinated human bodies in various positions and in different stages of preparation. It’s a little bit like that anatomical collection you took me once to scare me. Just that they don’t take alcohol anymore to keep the corpses from rotting but polymers (that’s highly advantageous, you don’t need anybody to refill the alcohol, people could even touch the corpse and, most importantly, you get rid of the smell that made me nauseous.
Still, an anatomical collection is there to teach medicine students how the human body looks like, how it works and what can go wrong. To a certain degree it’s good when people are interested in these kind of things, but a full exhibition of corpses in ridiculous (spectacular) poses even (as it is said about the recent exhibition) with two corpses having sex, is a little bit too much, not only for my tender 19th century feelings, but also for Tilia.
Those exhibits were humans once and even if nobody is allowed to speculate about the origin of these corpses and if those people had a choice when they donated them, I wonder if they really realized how they would to be presented. I don’t believe in a soul or a body that will be resurrected on Judgment Day, but I believe in Human dignity. Dead bodies shouldn’t be fun (well, I make an exception for this). Anatomical education for medicine students can’t be done without corpses, but those things shouldn’t be used to entertain or even shock. The human body might be artful, but it’s not art performed by Gunther von Hagens.
The Christians protesting outside the exhibition may have other reasons to do so, but being an atheist doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything just because it calls itself “science”

Edit: added link