Everyday Dying

I've recently had a break from writing posts as I was busy working and travelling. However, as I have a bit of time this evening, I wanted to share my experience from the amazing attraction, which I had an opportunity to attend during my visit to Amsterdam, Holland, where I went last month. The Body Worlds is well known to be a rather controversial set of exhibitions containing real dissected bodies of humans (coming from willing donors) and animals, preserved via a method known as plastination. The technique was developed by the founder of the Body Worlds, Gunther Von Hagens, in order to conserve specimens, so that they do not smell or decay. It is done by replacing the fat and water within the bodies with plastics. From experience, I can say that the method works amazingly well as during my time at the exhibition I could not smell anything bad, only a slight smell of plastic. Labelled plastinate of a human heart. While it is common for other people (such as my poor mot...

It is common for individuals and relatives of the deceased to donate dead bodies to science, believing they are contributing to good causes, such as disease research and potential organ donations. Most often there are no questions asked once the donations have been made. However, what should be known, and most often is not publicised, is the fact that donating a body to science is likely to contribute to commercial activities of the company the corpse had been donated to, more than to the interests of actual true science. The reality is that the body-donation industry has loose regulations, and profits often matter more than ensuring the cadavers are actually used for legitimate research. A case has been recently reported of an amateur who purchased human heads from body-donation companies, for several thousand dollars each. He stored the heads in a refrigerator for the purpose of conducting self-taught experiments on them, even though the organisations claimed to only be selling par...