The Undisputed Facts

...about BODYWORLDS:

The plastination technique was developed by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens in the 1970s.

Von Hagens is the creator of the traveling exhibit BODYWORLDS.

BODYWORLDS has been touring the world for over 10 years.

Von Hagens states that all of the full bodies in his exhibits are those of people who gave their consent and volunteered to be plastinated and displayed.

Von Hagens' former partner / corpse supplier was Dr. Sui Hong Jin of Dalian, China.

...about Bodies...the Exhibition:

Bodies...the Exhibition is promoted by Premier Exhibitions, Inc. of Atlanta, Georgia and has been touring since 2005.

Premier obtained all of the corpses and organs in the exhibit through the Dalian Medical University plastination laboratories in the People's Republic of China.

The president of Dalian Medical University Plastination Co. LTD. is anatomy professor, Dr. Sui Hong Jin.

Premier says that it has "[Chinese] government certificates that guarantee none of the bodies had been a murder victim, prisoner, mental patient or aborted fetus."

Premier is paying $25 million over five years to rent the bodies and organs it is exhibiting.

There are virtually no international, U.S. federal or state laws regulating this type of exhibit.

Since Bodies...the Exhibition began touring, Premier Exhibitions, Inc. has consistently stated up-front that all of the bodies displayed in the exhibition were unclaimed and unidentified. Premier is renting the cadavers and organs from China's Dalian Medical University, which acquired the unidentified, unclaimed corpses from police. This being the case, Premier has also consistently admitted that since all of the people were unidentified and already dead upon arrival at Dalian, none of the bodies or organs in Bodies...the Exhibition was donated. All were used without the consent of the individuals or their families.

...about China:

The Chinese government is prone to arrest and execute its citizens. More than 60 offenses, including some that are solely political or economic, are punishable by execution. In the past few years, 80 percent of the world's government-ordered executions have taken place in China.

Organ transplantation is a huge industry in China, and people from around the world travel there to purchase organs and undergo surgery. But China has no voluntary organ donation system. Tens of thousands of transplanted organs have come from unidentified sources.

At a surgical conference held Nov. 14, 2006, the Chinese deputy health minister publicly acknowledged that his country has a thriving illegal organ trade. He also said that most organs transplanted in China are taken from executed prisoners. To facilitate this process, the government has changed its preferred method of execution. Prisoners are put to death by lethal injection while on route to a hospital in a "mobile execution van." Once there, their organs are harvested.

Bodies...the Exhibition has been touring since 2005. Until July of 2006, selling organs was legal in China.

The Kilgour / Matas investigation:

Horrifying rumors circulated last year that China was harvesting organs from live Falun Gong prisoners to meet rising demand. Falun Gong, a banned practice in China, focuses on meditation exercises intended to improve physical and spiritual health.

Former Canadian parliamentarian David Kilgour and international human rights lawyer David Matas investigated the claims. They uncovered surgeons who bragged about having easy access to Falun Gong organs, Falun Gong prisoners who were regularly tested to determine donor matches and expatriate Chinese doctors who admitted harvesting organs from live Falun Gong prisoners, killing them in the process.

This evidence and more led to their July 2006 conclusion: "The government of China ... has over the past half decade put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Most ... were murdered by medical professionals for their vital organs."

Staff members at a Falun Gong detention center in the same Chinese province as Dalian Medical University have admitted to 'supplying' organs for transplantation purposes.