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Museum Plans to Open Corpse Show in Fla.

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The owners of a controversial exhibit featuring plasticized human corpses vowed Wednesday to open at a Tampa museum despite a state board voting that it would be illegal to do so.

Florida's Anatomical Board, which oversees the use of cadavers at the state's medical schools, voted 4-2 to deny a request by the owners of "BODIES, the Exhibition" to open a show at Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry that displays real bodies and body parts preserved with a process that replaces human tissue with silicone rubber.

The museum and exhibition's owners vowed to defy the decision and later Wednesday announced that the show would open Thursday morning instead of Saturday as scheduled. It's slated for a six-month run at the museum.

The dissected and preserved corpses belonged to Chinese people and went unclaimed or unidentified before being turned over to a medical school in China, according to the exhibit's owner, Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta.

Board members who voted against the exhibition said they were uncomfortable with the notion that neither the owners of the bodies nor their families granted formal permission for them to be displayed in a museum.

Arnie Geller, Premier president and CEO, said the company would go to court if attempts are made to stop the show from opening.

"We will fight for the right to present this exhibition, and we will fight for the right of the people of Florida to see this exhibition," Geller said.

What might happen next was not immediately clear Wednesday.

Lynn J. Romrell, chairman of the Anatomical Board, said he didn't know how the board's decision would be enforced. He suggested it would fall to Attorney General Charlie Crist, who last week issued an opinion that gave the board jurisdiction to regulate the show.

"We will definitely inform the attorney general of the situation, then I'm not going to tell anyone how to do their job," Romrell said. "I'll be anxious to see what happens."

But Crist spokeswoman JoAnn Carrin said the office doesn't have a role.

"It's up to the board to seek enforcement through the courts, or the museum to seek permission through the courts," Carrin said.

That would mean if the museum were to go forward, the board could ask a judge to issue an injunction to enforce its ruling, or the museum could seek a ruling from a judge to overrule the panel, she said.

Brian Wainger, an attorney for Premier, said that if legal steps are taken to stop the exhibit he would challenge the law outlining the duties of the Anatomical Board as unconstitutionally vague. The board has no guidelines or criteria in the law on which to base its judgment of a museum exhibition, he said.

During the 90-minute meeting, the six-member board expressed concern that having dissected and preserved bodies displayed in various poses without permission of the deceased or their families might deter Floridians from donating their bodies for research.

But the discussion kept coming back to whether the display of cadavers is appropriate and whether the museum could do it without consent.

"It really bothers me that they have no release forms from anyone," said board member Gerald R. Conover, chairman of the anatomy department at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, who cast one of the "no" votes.

Geller said displaying the plasticized bodies is no different than displaying mummies in a museum. The mummies just happen to be thousands of years older.

Before the meeting, Wainger sent a letter to the board saying that the bodies were "obtained legally and handled properly," unclaimed or unidentified and turned over by police in China to the Dalian Medical University. The university certified that all died of natural causes and that none were prisoners.

A lab at the university performed the plastination process, which replaces human tissue with silicone rubber. Skin is removed, exposing the rest - muscles, bones, organs, tendons, blood vessels, brains - in all their authentic glory. The Premier exhibit features 20 full cadavers and 260 other parts.

The Tampa stop marks the U.S. debut for the exhibit, which is similar to other controversial human anatomy exhibits that have drawn millions of curious spectators around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia, where some medical ethicists and others have spoken against the showings.

A similar show, called "Body Worlds," opened in the United States last year and has attracted a half million visitors to a Chicago museum since February.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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