Bodies’ exhibit draws criticism
By Monica Chen, The Herald-Sun
September 1, 2007
A half-dozen Duke University professors staged a protest of BODIES… The Exhibition at The Streets at Southpoint on Saturday.
Holding signs in English and Chinese reading “Real People — No Consent” and “For money and gold, abuse human rights,” the protesters handed out leaflets by the ticketing booth as doors to the exhibit opened at noon.
Produced by Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta, the BODIES exhibit displays more than 200 preserved organs and dissected bodies with their muscles, blood vessels and brains exposed. The company and many of its customers have defended the exhibit, which debuted in 2005 in Florida, saying it is educational. Critics say it is deeply unethical.
BODIES will finish its five-month run at Southpoint on Wednesday, but the protesters hope they will make a lasting impression, here and at the traveling exhibit’s other destinations.
“It’s a freak show,” said protester Robin Kirk, director of the Duke Human Rights Center. “How would people feel if these were American cadavers?”
“I had a visceral reaction to it. I started to ask myself, ‘Where did they get those bodies? Who are those people?’ ” said Sarah Redpath, a mother of three from Cary and organizer of the event.
According to the BODIES’ Web site, the unidentified, unclaimed corpses all died of natural causes. They were obtained from the Dalian Medical University Plastination Laboratories in China.
But Redpath and others are not convinced the bodies came by entirely legitimate means.
“We’ve got the Chinese system, which as we know is compromised and putting questionable products into America,” Redpath said, referring to the recent lead scare with toys and concerns about tainted food. She also said the profits involved in the sale of cadavers were “incentive for lots of people to do lots of bad things.”
Redpath, an interactive designer with IBM, had already protested at Southpoint twice since the exhibit opened April 4. She handed out leaflets for No Bodies 4 Profit, a local group she and other Triangle residents started to protest the exhibit. She got banned from the premises for six months last weekend.
“Just because this is being consumed by the public … doesn’t prove to me that there isn’t something shady going on here,” she said.
The controversial exhibit has triggered protests not only in Durham, but in London and cities from Florida to Pittsburgh, where an education coordinator with the Carnegie Science Center quit over the exhibition in July.
Pamela Nickell, manager of BODIES at Southpoint, declined to comment on the protest or customer reactions.
“It’s an educational exhibit,” she said. “Everybody pretty much likes it.”
Most of the passersby and people seeing BODIES ignored the protesters on Saturday, but Megan Moodie, a Durham resident who went to the exhibit, stopped and took a flyer.
“I think they’re right,” she said afterward. “I think the way it’s set up, it really makes you forget they’re people.”
The protesters were disbanded by mall security and a Durham County Sheriff’s deputy shortly after they began. Two were given citations by the deputy for trespassing, they said. The information could not be confirmed with the Sheriff’s Office.
Kirk said that although BODIES was closing soon, the protest would raise awareness of the questionable ethics of the operators.
“It’s now a permanent exhibit in New York,” she said. “This will be back.”