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Here are the newest members of the picket line:
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Can the UN do anything about the bodies coming from China?!
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Bonnie Young laing
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This exhibit is
appalling and inhumane. As a social scientist, I am required to gain informed consent for such innocuous practices as interviewing
"human subjects". Therefore, it is hard for me to contemplate how the bodies of "human subjects" can be displayed without
documented consent. It flies in the face of the ethics of every profession of which I am aware...the rationale for the
continuation of the exhibit is not persuasive.
My family will not support the Carnegie Science Center
as long as it continues to fail to honor basic ethical principles.
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I
was glad to find a way to protest this neo-Nazi exhibition. I hope others do too.
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Imperial, CA
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They
should be required to provide documentation of consent. This is appalling.
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Cassandra Franklin
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Using
bodies of people that have not given consent is absurd and should not be tolerated.
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It
seems that one of the Carnegie Science Center's
arguments for bringing "Bodies ... the Exhibition" to Pittsburgh is that it's a very popular exhibit.
You could
say the same about the circus freak shows that once toured the country.
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I cannot believe that any culture would accept
such a flagrant and disgusting demonstration of disrespect for human life. I am ashamed that this exhibit has made its way
into the USA.
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I'm still in shock that this is in fact real.
Where does it all end? How is this different from taxidermy, but for people? Is there anything sacred left in
the world? I will do everything in my power to oppose this madness.
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Thank
you, Ms. Catz, for your courageous moral stand.
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The
20/20 show on ABC was very disturbing. I got to agree that Elaine Catz was right all along and additionally she had the integrity
to resign over her principles.
It is just totally unacceptable to use bodies for this exhibit when we are not 100% sure
that the people have agreed to it.
It is an embarrassment to Pittsburgh- we should be better than this.
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As
a human being, and as a resident of the Pittsburgh, and as a supporter of the Carnegie Museums, I am ashamed that I and other
people here have been silent on this issue. The exhibit is a disgrace, viewers who are aware of the questions and condone
it are in denial, and the leadership of the museum has been totally irresponsible in failing to understand the human rights
questions and failing to do real diligence in determining the provenance of the exhibit and the "bodies". Shame on the Carnegie.
Much
gratitude to you Ms Catz for your courage and your witness.
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This
is truly appalling. Hypocrisy at the highest level. I am sure the humans in this "exhibit" did not sign up for it.
Are their families being compensated? I don't think so. It is disrespectful and immoral. This is just another example
of the moral decay of our society.
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Winston-Salem, NC
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We
are horrified by this (we found out about it Feb 15). Thank you for your efforts in recognizing and working against
a thing unconscionable in every way, beginning to end! Please let us know if there is something we can do in our area,
or also the New Orleans
/ Mobile area. I have been posting about this on the internet with links to your site. Thank you for your courage
and conviction in leaving Carnegie.
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I
believe the Show to be unethical. Anyone paying the cost of admission becomes responsible for the actions of the Show's
Creators.
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appalling
lack of morality and human sensitivity
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I
find the use of the word "specimen" when referring to human beings says it all.
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As a retired public health professor, I am
outraged at seeing the comments defending this exhibit as a learning experience. An even better learning experience
is to work with people who are homeless, who are living in poverty, and who, as innocent individuals, suffer the consequences
of military actions.
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I have written a personal letter to
JO HAAS questioning her common sense, ethics and sensitivity as well as her persistent attempts to justify the unjustifiable.
Am boycotting the Science Center as long as she is affiliated.
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I am very surprised that there are so many others who feel exactly the same
as I do. Utterly horrified, sickened and appalled. I've lost faith in most of humanity. This society and it seems most of the so called "civilized" world has
reached a new low. There isn't much I can add or say that hasn't already been expressed by other members of this Picket Line.
I hope the spirits of these abused, tortured, and exploited individuals haunt
every person involved who has profited from this abomination. Have these people
ever heard of Karma? It’s obvious they have no conscience or sense of right or wrong. And that goes for all of the patrons
viewing this exhibit also. One should always remember; When you look into the
abyss, It looks back into you.
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Unethical, immoral and pornographic. No science or art here, only bloody
murder for profit.
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This is an important step in ending the silence that becomes complicity. History abounds (as does daily life) with instances
in which people and other creatures are treated as objects of use, mis-use, to be entertained by or titillated by -in the
guise of being educated. One must disengage one's heart in order to view this exhibit- and that is a very dangerous thing
to do. When these plastinated bodies are no longer useful, where will they go? Will they be sent to a landfill or incinerator
like trash, will someone remember they were once human beings, created in the image of G-d, subjective consciousnesses of
the Universe? And what do we become, as users?
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i went to this exhibit almost a
year ago and i still feel horrified. it is shameful.
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What really bothers me is that
the Catholic Church, the Pittsburgh Diocese in this particular instance, is condoning this macabre and grotesque display...They
need to get their act together and actually stand up for something in this world.
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My Chemistry teacher, saw this
and is absolutely amazed by this exhibit. I on the other hand am not, and wish I never would have seen it. At
all. Even being a pre nursing major in college, this is absolutely disgusting. This is showing the public, humans
cut in half, etc. I'd MUCH rather learn about my insides from a PLASTIC model. This is such gore to me.
Who would agree for the world to see their dead body? Disgusting.
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I am glad to see that someone (Ms Catz) has had
the courage to back up their convictions. This isn't education, it voyeurism in its ugliest form.
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This is morally and ethically reprehensible. It
disgusts me to think that anyone would participate in this exhibition.
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As a medical professional, we are charged with
the dignity of our fellow humans while alive, and after death. We must shut down these freakshows as a sign of respect
for humanity.
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This is very wrong and needs to be stopped.
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I feel that the Bodies exhibition is dishonorable.
It is wrong that this is how anyone thought to make a profit. To make a circus of people who had no idea that they'd be made
deceased clowns, plastered and displayed in front of viewers who believed that stronger ethics and morals were behind the
exhibit. I am disappointed to say that I am one of those viewers who have been to a viewing here in Detroit in May 2007. I had no idea that this was actually set up as a form of national new wave entertainment
for a colossal profit. I began realizing something was wrong when I found out there were several simultaneous viewings all
across the country, that had begun to extend dates to continue months beyond the original schedule ending as if to take advantage
of the ever flowing profit. That's when it hit me, "What's really going on here?" I apologize for my attendance, and more
so that I didn't ask the "right" questions prior to attending. This saddens me horribly.
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Exhibitions of this sort are an assault on the
dignity of the human person and the existential meaning of the body... BODIES, specifically, is an assault on basic legal
rights.
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Praise God that there are still people in the
world that are willing to recognize evil and to speak out at all costs. I am
proud to stand with you. Thank you.
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This practice is morally reprehensible. If it is immoral to use stem cells to cure diseases then surely it is immoral, unethical and potentially illegal to use dead bodies for entertainment. I can not imagine any value a real body has in education that an artificial plastic model cannot provide
to the general public.
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First we show disrespect for living people in
the name of entertainment, now it's the dead. I thought this was supposed to be the 21st century.
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Thank you, for giving me a voice.
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I made the mistake of visiting the Bodies: The Exhibition show in Cincinnati,
OH, going in uninformed. My friends and I have
been sickened and feel cheapened by the experience.
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I agree with the views expressed by everyone
on this picket line. To desecrate human bodies is immoral, irresponsible and an atrocity. Of course this desensitizes
people to the value of fellow human beings. Of course it is a modern-day freak show. Of course it more than likely violates
the wishes of the victims in the show to be displayed in such a manner. Thank all of you for expressing your views.
Especially thank you Elaine Catz for your moral courage in quitting a job you probably loved (prior to this grotesque display)
and for establishing this web site.
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This grotesque display of human beings as meat
is only the latest and most morbid manner in which the human body is commodified for corporate profit. We must do all we can
to resist these intrusive and perverse practices for the sake of the people on display who have had their privacy and dignity
violated in the deepest sense. Shame on anyone patronizing these exhibits on the basis of getting 'an education'- their are
many alternative ways to educate people about the body without exploitation.
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As a medical student who has worked with cadavers
as part of my educational training, I have been fully aware and sensitive to the respect for donated persons and the absolute
ethical need for informed consent. Medical schools undergo a thorough and respectful
process when interviewing donors, and much caution is gone into protecting their privacy and dignity. This exhibit lacks documentation of consent and holds at best a foul "justification" that the bodies were
unclaimed (which does not negate the inherent dignity of a person and their body). I
am disgusted that much of public is not aware or is unconcerned of this human taxidermy and profit murder.
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If a society is to be gauged by what it considers
entertainment and what cannot be classified as such, I think 'BODIES...the Exhibition' forms a scathing judgement about what
we as a people are willing and ready to pay to see.
The fact that deceased human beings are displayed
in idiotic sportsman poses gives a horrifying frivolity to our denial of death itself, and in particular, death with dignity.
What is next?
"My Lai.....THE MUSICAL"?
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Every Saturday I will be at the Cincinnati Museum in person protesting from at least 10-12, later if schedule allows it.
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Usually I am very tolerant and open-minded, but
this has been very hard for me to wrap my mind around.
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This
is horrible. How would the attendees feel if this was their Mother, Father, Son
or Daughter dissected and posed for a paying public's entertainment. Saying that
a body was "unclaimed" is too sad -- because this poor soul had no family to claim their body it is all right for us to then
use them for entertainment? For profit???
What has happened to the human race so that people can sink so low? What
about death with dignity? Perhaps showing some respect for the dead could help
us show respect for the living.
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One of these exhibits opened in Kansas City today and I am appalled.
The ease by which we as a society whitewash over human debasement and immorality and praise it as the exercise of a free market
society is astonishing.
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The concept makes me physically ill!
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We are a doomed society if we see this as art!
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This is the most appalling exhibit imaginable,
and seeing that all the bodies looked of Asian descent, I did some research, and it seems it's a good chance that these people
did not "voluntarily" give their bodies for this exhibit, they were executed for their religious beliefs. There are no consent
forms on file or exhibited, they don't even know who these people are or how they died. My guess is that they are Falun Gong
followers. USA should not allow such reprehensible
acts to come here and be rewarded, this is a clear violation of human rights.
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I am the most vocal freedom of speech advocate
on the block; however before we defend free speech we need to defend human dignity.
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I am
personally opposed to any and all body plastination exhibits, both as a person and as a Catholic. Plastinating human bodies
is an affront to the dignity of humanity, treating it like a piece of cheap, sensationalist "artwork", instead of part of
what makes a human person wholly human...The human body should be reverently returned to the earth from which its substance
was ultimately derived, not carted around to be gawked at by the masses, who seem to have lost the fine art of critical thinking.
...what
of the ones brought in from China? Who were they and how did they die? They might have been some poor soul who was worked
to death in a sweat shop factory, or who was wrongly executed in one of the Chinese concentration camps. Would you display
the body of a Holocaust victim this way?
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Cincinnati, OH
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Thank you for doing this!
I am working here in Cincinnati
in leading the grassroots opposition movement here along with my brother Morris.
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Washington, D.C.
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Right now I'm writing a paper for a college course on the ethics
of the bodies exhibit and this was an amazing source.
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Sister Berty Arenottsberg
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This is truly a grotesque exploitation of humanity for profit.
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It is vulgar and disgusting to profit off the death of political prisoners.
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Amy Fogelstrom Chai, MD, MS
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Ellicott City, MD
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I am a physician. I have
dissected human beings. That is where my commonality with the creator of "Body Worlds" ends. Actually, in re-reading
the sentence above, I inadvertently wrote the word, "human beings." THAT is the difference between a physician and a
plastinator. I see the corpses as people, and those who view the Body exhibit will NOT see any human beings. They
will see "art" created from skinned corpses.
What would you think if YOUR physician had worked for the plastinators?
Can you picture YOUR physician skinning a patient and then posing the deceased like a doll? My guess is that you would
not feel very comfortable with that doctor. WHY? You would feel in your bones that there was something very wrong
with that doctor. And you would be right. "Undraping" or "posing" a cadaver in medical school would get you kicked
out in a hurry. That is because it shows a profound lack of respect and understanding of the value and dignity of the
human being once housed by that temple of flesh.
Doctors see naked people, but they are not aroused...they see dead people,
but they are not morbidly fascinated. That is because they are taught to care deeply for the human being inside the
body. "Bodies" is what happens when you no longer care about the human being...the flesh is an object. That is
my definition of pornography.
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Cincinnati,
OH
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I think this is the most disgusting
form of human trafficking that exists. After the ABC 20/20 special I'm simply speechless and horrified. Honestly I don't think
I will renew my Cincinnati Museum Center
membership next year. We just don't know where the bodies came from. In the best case scenario we do know that none of the
deceased or families gave permission. I just can't help to think of a mother in China
wondering what happened to her missing son. Frankly I find the public’s response banal.
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KY
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Human Bodies - 25 million rental fee
Exhibition
(exploitation) - Over 200 million in profit
Human rights, human dignity and morality – Worthless
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Karl W. Metzner
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Kimberly, WI
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I
have been furious about this exhibit for a long time. I have extensive work and study experience in China, speak and read Chinese
fluently, am a former corporate attorney, and want to help people understand that the people who possessed the bodies on display
did not, as far as we know, give their permission for their use in this manner.
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I
believe that this body exhibit fuels executions in China and is therefore a crime against humanity.
How our
so-called Christian nation is able to turn a blind eye to this murder for profit venture sends a powerful message of hypocrasy.
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will
u make this exhibition with the flesh of ur child??
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I'm so happy to have found others
who are outraged by this new form of entertainment. I was starting to think that there was something wrong with me,
as I have been sickened by this since first hearing of it. They are now on display at one of the Trump casinos in Atlantic City. If we become de-sensitized
to this practice, what's next? It's almost as if we are in the end times, that people would take their children to see
this.
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A friend innocently mentioned they were going for a brief getaway and that they might
stop at the Art Deco Natural Historic Museum in Cincinnati. They have a young son. When I sent an impassioned
plea to not go there, and why, I came upon your site.
I am appalled that a city like Cincinnati and the Museum has allowed this exhibit to go on for so
long, apparently continuing to make a profit. It is a sad commentary on our society that people attend every day viewing,
basically, murdered victims from a repressive government.
Please write your Congressman in support of house bill, HR 5677.
Although Congress is in summer recess, perhaps it can be taken up again. Because of the many people who somehow believe that
freedom of expression actually gives dispensation for viewing bodies of murdered Chinese, and protesters have been threatened
and taken from premises of these exhibits, the only way to stop the continued victimization and keep demand for more prisoners
bodies high, is to stop the importation of these bodies.
If they were NOT real bodies, learning
about the body is fine. If you want to learn about the body, attend a college class or the free health classes offered
by hospitals. Devote your life to saving real people in any of the excellent health or rescue fields available.
This is a portion of the e-mail I sent to my friend-
In addition
to believing that it is denigrating to the body God gave us to plasticize it in the way that they do, having the bodies perform
odd motions, etc., I am very convinced the bodies are of young, undoubtedly Chinese, dissidents who were executed and the
bodies sold on the black market. The whole thing is revolting, because of this. They were smuggled in as medical models,
plastic and they are actually plasticized bodies. The 20/20 story and others do have compelling evidence that the living people
did NOT give permission (as with another group in Europe-grotesque but the people knew what was happening to them.) These
people were not only imprisoned and executed in life but then are forever imprisoned after death, in plastic, for hordes of
Americans and others to stare at.
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A major bioethical issue arises when we allow harvested organs and bodies from
China of those who did not consent to be traveling in the United States and dissected on display.
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A
new exhibition is opening in Puerto Rico.
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Beatriz E. Ramirez Betances
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I saw the exhibit and now I feel shame. I feel I was misled.
I am glad this website was here to show me the light. I have posted pictures on my flickr site with links to this website.
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I
think it's a scandal, making money out of dead bodies. Also, how can we be sure they gave their consent? they were not executed?
that there's no trade of human bodies?
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It
is sad that some people,especially ones representing the scientific community, have become so dehumanized,that they put financial
interests before human rights. In this case the right to know. This event is reminiscent of the scenes in which
Dr. Hannibal feeds his guests human flesh for dinner, as a means to show how similar they can be to him. It would seem
that someone trying to bring out the morbidity in people.
They are showing "Bodies" right here in Old
San Juan, as I write.
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