Body Preservation as Art.

Professor Von Hagns

October 2002.

By Trisha Cook

Just over 200 members of the general public paid to gather together in an old brewery set up with lights and cameras. The focus of attention: a steel surgical table. You hear anxious chatter of the audience and the crumpling of plastic bags as they prepare them to be filled with vomit (if need be). The 72-year-old Peter Meiss has been dead for quite a few months when Professor Gunther von Hagns rolled his corpse into the room. And the show begins.
On Wednesday November 20, 2002, a public post-mortem examination was held at the Atlantis gallery in London, England. Such a display has not been held in Great Britain for over 170 years.
The physician that performed the autopsy, Professor Gunther von Hagns, is accused of breaking an ethical code of conduct concerning post mortem autopsies. According to Her Majesty’s Inspector of Anatomy, it was ruled that the professor did not have a license to perform autopsies. It has not yet been decided if any legal action will be taken.
Von Hagns claimed to be giving a lesson on anatomy for the general public rather than letting it be restricted to medical students. “I change the way people see themselves”, states von Hagns “No model will ever shy people away from smoking, but a real lung- now that’s different.” Hagns did indeed show the lungs of the late Peter Meiss and he placed them on trays for display. He also did this with every single organ that was removed until the body cavity was empty.
Those who viewed the autopsy had mixed feelings about the outcome. Some of the audience members were calling it a spectacle carried out by a circus performer, other were calling it a very education experience.
"In the films there's normally a lot of blood. That's what I anticipated, but I'm glad I didn't see that. I'm very, very pleased I came. I've found it very educational” stated Maureen Batra from Barnet to a Reuters reporter, “I really don't know what all the fuss is about. There're issues such as human cloning, determining the sex of your child, those things, I feel shouldn't be done. But this? I'm glad I came. I think this is completely legal."
Jane Henna was one of the protesters who was outside of the event, she is also the director of Epilepsy bereaved, stated that she was against the autopsy “(von Hagns) has crossed the line on relation to the conduct of post mortems, there are serious ethical moral and public interest concerns that have not been properly addressed”.
A fourth year medical student, Cristina Koppel, attended the live autopsy and was upset at how unprofessional and un-educational it was. “ I feel very embarrassed about the way von Hagns has carried out the procedure without really explaining what he was doing. He wanted to educate but he couldn’t do it. People weren’t really learning anything.”
Channel 4 in London broadcasted the hour long event late that night and had received 33 complaints about the “sick” show while it was still airing and 42 more complaints the following morning.
John Williams, the head director of ethics for the Canadian Medial Association (CMA) claims, “We (CMA) does not hold a permanent opinion concerning Von Hagn’s live autopsy. There are certainly unusual factors and there are some beliefs that it is not for the public to see. But there are no current cases of such an incident happening in Canada for us to comment on”.
Professor Gunther von Hagns is also the man behind Body Worlds, a controversial display of “plastinated” bodies. Such displays include a pregnant corpse in a playboy pose with her 7 month old foetus showing through her cut stomach, a corpse standing upright holding is skin as if it were a trophy in his right hand and a man riding a horse (which has also been plastinated) holding his own brain in his hand.
“I can give back the holistic view of anatomy.” Comments Von Hagn on his Body World display. “That you can study the entirety of the body. Of course, that you can visually craft it, that it is not in fluid anymore, it is colourful, and it is not smelly. So people can build up a kind of body pride. They understand themselves as a piece of wonderful nature that people can be proud of. And in this way I change the way that people see themselves.”