Body Worlds Exhibition Newcastle Saturday 26th July 2014

On Saturday I drove down to Newcastle to visit the Life Science centre. I was aware there was a Body World exhibition being held there and this is something I have always been interested in seeing. The Newcastle exhibition brings together a collection of real human bodies, specimens and organs, willed by donors and preserved through plastination - a ground-breaking preservation process invented by scientist Dr Gunther von Hagens. This exhibition was previously shown in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Healthy and diseased organs are shown alongside each other allowing people to see how lifestyle choices, such as smoking, may affect the body (very important for a child to see) Plastination is a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts, first developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample. The first step of plastination is fixation. Fixation, frequently utilizing a formaldehyde based solution, serves two functions. Dissecting the specimen to show specific anatomical elements can be time consuming. Formaldehyde or other preserving solutions help prevent decomposition of the tissues. They may also confer a degree of rigidity. This can be beneficial in maintaining the shape or arrangement of a specimen. A stomach might be inflated or a leg bent at the knee for example The second step….After any necessary dissections take place, the specimen is then placed in a bath of acetone. Under freezing conditions, the acetone draws out all the water and replaces it inside the cells. In the third step, the specimen is then placed in a bath of liquid polymer, such as silicone rubber, polyester or epoxy resin. By creating a vacuum, the acetone is made to boil at a low temperature. As the acetone vaporizes and leaves the cells, it draws the liquid polymer in behind it, leaving a cell filled with liquid plastic. The plastic must then be cured with gas, heat, or ultraviolet light, in order to harden it. A specimen can be anything from a full human body to a small piece of an animal organ, and they are known as 'plastinates'. Once plastinated, the specimens and bodies are further manipulated and positioned prior to curing (hardening) of the polymer chains. For the first 20 years, plastination was used to preserve small specimens for medical study. It was not until the early 1990s that the equipment was developed to make it possible to plastinate whole body specimens, each specimen taking up to 1,500 man hours to prepare (he has also done an Elephant so I wonder how long that took) . The first exhibition of whole bodies was displayed by von Hagens in Japan in 1995 Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS exhibitions are the original, precedent-setting public anatomical exhibitions of real human bodies, and the only anatomical exhibits that use donated bodies, willed by donors to the Institute for Plastination for the express purpose of serving the BODY WORLDS mission to educate the public about health and anatomy. To date, more than 10,000 people have agreed to donate their bodies to Institute for Plastination Should you take your kids to see this? I took my 10 year old son and he found it very interesting. It’s just about knowing your child and what they would enjoy or understand. I do think that kids should see this exhibition, its very educational. The sooner you understand your body and its future, the better. The exhibit could prevent him from smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity and general poor lifestyle choices. This exhibit could encourage him to grow in to a healthier adult some day. Above all, I know that this exhibit will install a great respect for his own body, his organs, their functions and would create more awareness on how precious life is. I ensured my son paid particular attention to the effects of smoking on the lungs and asked him if he would ever smoke and was very please with his answer “of course not!!!!” I do think this has always been his thoughts but its good now that he also has this visual of a smokers lung to re-enforce this attitude. I can remember seeing a smokers lungs on the Open University as a child and that impression stayed with me, it’s my opinion this should be mandatory for children to see such exhibits, what’s the point of putting pictures on “fag” packets when the damage has already started and the smoker is already hooked!!! Prevention is better than the cure but if you are already a smoker please see this exhibition, it may give you the prod you need to stop (I know its easy for me to say this being a non-smoker) Its also very interesting seeing the digestive system and there is also educational photos of the westernised diet compared with other counties (scary stuff really seeing how our diet compares very poorly with places we consider as “third world”)