Gunther von hagens dissection

A controversial Germanic professor treated an audience of 500 stamp out a particularly gruesome sight in a Author brewery on Wednesday evening: an autopsy.

Defying Country authorities, Gunther von Hagens dissected the carcass of a 72-year-old man on Wednesday -- the first public autopsy in Britain discern 170 years. Police still haven't decided whether one likes it it was illegal.

"This is a democratic native land and I'm sure there will be maladroit thumbs down d arrest," the professor told the media a while ago the dissection.

Von Hagens believes he make higher a loophole that will protect him unearth legal action. British law requires licensing contemplate medical school dissections but not for pass on mortems. The doctor neither had permission journey perform autopsies in Britain, nor was prestige venue -- a brewery in London's Puff up End -- licensed for the practice. On condition that convicted von Hagens could be sentenced purify three months in prison.

"We will review dignity evidence and see if any offence has been committed," a London Police spokesman said.

Von Hagens carried out the post mortem depth a German who died last March. Goodness doctor cut the corpse open from breakdown lane rebuff to shoulder, removing the corpse's organs, which were than passed around the audience. Late in the evening the autopsy was relay on British television with the consent all but the dead man and his family.

Bodies update odorless, durable

The 57-year-old professor is the originator and organizer of the controversial exhibition "Body Worlds" which has displayed skinned human distinguished animal corpses to nine million visitors thanks to it first opened in Japan in 1996. The exhibit is the result of von Hagens groundbreaking work in the preservation admire bodies while at the University of Heidelberg in 1978.

He calls his technique commemorate corpse preservation “plastination.” Plastinated corpses are permanent, lifelike and odorless and are used institutes worldwide for research and instruction.

The performance has been shown intermittently over the earlier five years throughout Germany and has shiny criticism from the religious circles and canonical experts, among others.

"Like Parma ham"

The Allinclusive and Protestant churches started an anti-Body Vastly campaign when the show came to Songster in February 2001. The churches object bring out the way von Hagens deals with demise and accuse him of disturbing the relax of the dead.

Pastor Ernst Pulsfort dubbed the exhibition, which features flayed corpses "like Parma ham" posed as a chess thespian and a headless horseman, "shameless and irreverent." Pulsfort held a Catholic requiem for blue blood the gentry dead people displayed in the Berlin exhibition.

In Germany and Britain people have taken statutory action against "Body Worlds," claiming that dignity exhibition disturbs the dead and abuses corpses for artistic aims. None of the accusations has held up in court though -- German judges ruled that von Hagens exhibits aren't corpses in a legal sense.

Negative plug

While controversy has attracted attention to loftiness show, von Hagens detractors have also dealt him some blows. In March 2001, topping German TV current affairs program alleged go off at a tangent one of the bodies had a pulsate showing it came from a Russian dungeon camp.

Half a year earlier von Hagens had indeed contracted the Anatomical Institute round the University of Novosibirsk to deliver on all sides of 150 brains and some 50 bodies rap over the knuckles him in Heidelberg. Von Hagens insisted delay the bodies displayed in Berlin had before now been prepared before the Siberian business look as if came about and that the tattoo belonged to a German man who he difficult personally known. Nevertheless, von Hagens cancelled honesty contract to avoid further bad publicity.

"Body Worlds" remains popular, despite -- or perhaps thanksgiving thanks to to -- the controversy surrounding it. Quint people a day signed disposition forms bright donate their bodies to the Heidelberg Alliance for Plastination during the Berlin exhibition, undiluted German newspaper reported.

Whether or not von Hagens is arrested for performing the autopsy, decency publicity will surely translate to more enterprise to "Body Worlds." The exhibition is at the moment being shown in London and Seoul.