'Living on' in educational exhibit

By Diane Toroian Keaggy,
Tuesday, Jan. 22 2008

Many of us wish to donate our organs when we die. Others plan to give their bodies to a medical school.

But after seeing "Body Worlds," Jim Bilderback of St. Louis wants his body preserved in plastic and toured around the globe.

"I have no desire to be immortal in any way," said Bilderback, 41, manager of the employee health department at St. John's Mercy Medical Center. "My real goal is educational. Cadavers are hard to use as a learning tool — they're gray and rubbery. I think people can learn so much about anatomy from this exhibit."

So far, some 187,000 spectators have viewed "Body Worlds 3: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies," which opened at the St. Louis Science Center in October. It features 20 bodies posed in dramatic fashion and 200 specimens of organs, nerves and tissue.

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Critics, however, question whether the exhibit serves science or merely fuels morbid curiosity.

"I think it's exploitation of the human body with a profit motive," said Rabbi Hershey Novack of Chabad on Campus-Rohr Center for Jewish Life. "The bodies seemed to be posed to titillate, not to educate. The goal is to make a buck."

Novack also doubts the people who appear in the three touring "Body Worlds" shows fully understood how their corpses would be altered. Gomez insists they did; the exhibits' many critics are not convinced.

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