When flesh becomes plastic

Medicine is not about routine bureaucracy. Medicine is an art. And some physicians extended the creative part of it beyond what is normally expected. Because medicine is more than scribbling a receipt. Medicine is about diagnosing problems and solving them. And when no treatment is to be found, medicine is about dealing with human suffering. And it is about studying the normal. Like the variety of human anatomy.

This is why Gunther von Hagens became my role model in medicine. Most fellow physicians can’t imagine practicing their medical specialty other than being employed in a state hospital where local politics and insurance companies dictate not how medicine should be practiced, but how it IS practiced. This guy belongs to the minority. Gunther von Hagens created a tissue preservation method, patented it, improved upon it by dedicating thousands of hours of hard work and finally carved himself a niche that wasn’t even there when he enrolled in medical school.

After inventing plastination and introducing this technique to medical schools, von Hagens could have chosen to remain known in the anatomy circles, but he chose to create traveling anatomical exhibits and became worldwide famous. Art liberated him. He extended the narrow definition of anatomic pathology (his medical specialty) from being practiced in mostly public hospitals and small practices to creating his own exhibitions and traveling the world while allowing the lay public to experience human anatomy in a way in which I couldn’t: without any disturbing odors.

I saw his Body Worlds exhibition in Germany and in Romania and I was about to see it again in New York if it wasn’t for an already crowded schedule. I read plenty of materials written by him. His passion is visible in every sculptural plastinate. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon a collection of objective essays about Body Worlds, a book written by authors not affiliated with the exhibition. I read the book page after page. It took me longer than expected because of the academic tone in which it was written. I was surprised to notice how the same exhibition that I was so enthusiastic about produced such a mix of reactions in other people.

Getting back to the book, some essays were awful and some were just brilliant. I give this book 3 stars for the writing style – too dry with too many ambiguous words – and 5 stars for the chosen topic. That would be 4 stars on average.

Preserved human remains – casually called ‘mummies’ – were displayed in science and history museums long before plastination became an English word. But what this exhibition brought new is that the candy-colored plastinates were not millennial-dead corpses, but people who recently died and donated their bodies. I totally get von Hagen’s insistence to preserve privacy – maybe because confidentiality has been drilled into my mind as a must for all physicians. But is it fair to strip these people of their identity by removing all data about them including their facial skin, while leaving behind his signature only?

Despite my good intentions to preserve the dignity of people even after they died, this book made me wonder whether plastinates can still be considered humans. If a human body has around 70% water and fluids become polymers during the process of plastination, are they still human? Are they transhuman? Are they human statues? Talk about reincarnation as an art object.

I often think about these boundaries. Let me give you some context. During daytime, I learn the ropes of geriatrics as a medical resident in a former Communist country. I am surrounded by elderly patients and (mostly) older colleagues. And it often seems like we live in different worlds. Unlike them, I have no artificial prosthesis in my body. OK, I wear glasses but that’s about it. My mind on the other hand, regularly switches between the real world and the Internet. My mobile phone became like an extension of my brain. And my mind learned to process data as if living in a global village where English is the default language. I forgot how to focus on my city only. Which turned me into a stranger in my own country – especially towards the older generation. So who stepped the human boundaries here: me or them?

Life is fleeting. Plastination endures. Plastinated bodies could endure for thousands of years, making this process a type of synthetic immortality. At least when it comes to physical bodies only. Except for their gender, skinless plastinates are impossible to identify. Which makes plastination the opposite of mind uploading. In the latter case, identity is all that is preserved. Needless to say, mind uploading is still science fiction for the moment.

One of the purposes of plastination exhibits is education. Anatomical education and medical education. Many plastinates educate by visually displaying the consequences of smoking, alcohol and obesity. One of the essays from this collection challenged the lifestyle theory of disease. As a physician, I know all too well you can still die even if you don’t smoke, if you don’t consume alcohol or if you stay skinny. Cancer is a reality in young people too. Cancer happens in children. Accidents are a part of life. Genetics and epigenetics can cause many diseases. And the environment itself may be to blame. Pollution may wreak havoc inside your body. You may warm yourself and cook by burning charcoal or wood which is just as damaging as smoking is. There are so many problems to solve out there. But I still think the educational part of the plastination exhibits is useful as we often inflict such damage on our own. In a specialty like geriatrics where decline is the rule instead of the exception, lifestyle changes bring a ray of hope and a little bit of progress where there is none. So I still recommend people quit their vices and lose weight no matter their age. Even if I know the benefits are minimal.

I have no idea whether all people displayed in such exhibits gave their informed consent or not. As much as I admire Gunther von Hagens, I can’t understand how could he maintain ties with former communist countries (Russia, Kyrgyzstan) or actual ones (China) when he went to jail because of an anti-communism student protest. And how such a novel exhibit was first turned down in USA. And how he survived all the critique that is bestowed upon people who change the world in their own small way. But I don’t understand a lot of things anyway.

Closing the circle, my favorite essay was the last one which compared plastination exhibits with modern body art sculpture. The common denominator is plastic. Or any synthetic media including silicone and fiberglass. And the human representation. Both plastinates and contemporary body sculptures awaken human emotions with artificial means to display the human form. Because both of them define the anxiety of our times: what does it mean to be human?

Anca Ioviţă is the author of Eat Less Live Longer: Your Practical Guide to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition ,The Aging Gap Between Species and What Is Your Legacy? 101Ways on Getting Started to Create and Build One available on Amazon and several other places. If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to sign up to receive updates on longevity news and novel book projects!

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