Organ Donor

This Time Last Week, Monica and I were attending the Body Worlds exhibit at Science World. If you haven’t heard of this, it takes a while to fully appreciate it. The exhibit consists of 20 or so bodies and even more organs and bones on display. The bodies are frozen in various forms of movement (ballet, skateboard, track and field). The thing is, they aren’t recreations, they are actual human bodies. They’ve been preserved via a process called plastination that makes the tissue plastic-like, odourless, and apparently very pose-able. For most of the specimens, they have removed the skin and dissected the muscles and organs to display certain features of the human anatomy. The ostensible goal is educating the public about human anatomy. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to see all those humans with their skin removed, muscles flayed open, penises (peni?) sliced in half (in one case, at least). They still have eyes, teeth, eyebrows and the fine hairs on the skin (when they have skin). I was only really bothered when they left the skin on. This one specimen had strips of skin left on, and that bothered me. It was all very interesting, but I’m not sure it sits well with me. The bodies were all anonymous and from willing donors who, for whatever reason, wanted to be part of the process by which the public is educated about the human body. The main goal is education, but given the cost of exhibit I can’t help but think that someone is benefiting financially from all this. There was a display showing what the release forms look like, and the kinds of rights donors have to decide what their body is used for: public display, sale to educational facilities, etc. There was an example of a filled-in form (with the names scratched out) and the guy’s reason for donation was that he spent a lot of time in his life getting in shape and taking care of himself and when he dies he doesn’t want that to go to waste. So he had himself preserved as plastic for giggling schoolgirls and idiot schoolboys to gawk at before they run to the cafeteria or gift shop. I guess the question that sticks in my mind is Why don’t you donate your organs, if you’re so damn healthy? Granted, he might not be when he dies, and I’m sure not all the bodies in the exhibit were eligible for organ donation. But what about the ones that were? I can’t help but think about lives that could have been saved if it weren’t for the vanity of others.

Anyway. After the exhibit Monica and I went to Gas Town to see The Steam Clock. It’s a clock that runs on steam. I wish I could say it was more exciting than it sounds…but it’s not, really. It was pretty, though. We ended up in a bad part of town and walked quickly away to the polar opposite of the bad part: Robson St., which was all expensive shops and the like. We had gelato then went home.