ABC News 20/20: Bodies In Exhibit Obtained By Questionable Means
Reported by: Brendan Keefe
Photographed by: 9News/ ABC
Web produced by: Neil Relyea
An investigation into "Bodies...The Exhibition" – which aired on ABC's 20/20 Friday night – revealed that some of the specimens may be the remains of executed Chinese prisoners.
But the show at the Cincinnati Museum Center remains open, and quite popular.
First, a big defection. The German doctor who invented the plasticizing process by which the bodies are preserved has stopped using specimens from China – and he has destroyed several of the cadavers.
Meanwhile, the corporation putting on the Cincinnati show says it ultimately doesn't know where the bodies came from.
"They may be political prisoners, they may be people who have been executed," said Reverend Mike Seger, a theologian with the Anthenaeum of Ohio.
The plasticized corpses provide instant, visual answers to the question: "How does the body work?"
But there are questions the Dead cannot answer.
"Who are they? Did they give permission?," asked Rev. Seger. "How were they obtained? Are they prisoners who were executed?"
Local theologians and human rights activists paid close attention to the ABC News 20/20 investigation.
"This is our worst fear," said Morris Tsai, who opposes the exhibit.
ABC News reporter Brian Ross revealed evidence that some of the Chinese bodies were obtained by questionable means.
"They get them by paying $200 or $300 on a black market in China that includes, in some cases bodies, of executed prisoners," Ross reported.
Ross and his team first went to a processing facility on the German-Polish border where the doctor who invented the preservation process discovered injuries inconsistent with natural or even accidental death.
"Museum Center should take the high road and close the exhibit," says Morris Tsai.
While Douglass McDonald, the Museum Center president, says the, "Museum Center will always do the right thing."
The Museum Center's president, reacting to a preview of the report, said the goal is education, not exploitation.
"It's a good thing for people to take these issues seriously, Museum Center takes them seriously," said McDonald. "We took them seriously when we empanelled the ethics committe initially.."
However, ABC News reporter Brian Ross tells 9News, "I think they may want to take a hard second look."
"The problem is it's pretty hard to do that from Cincinnati," says Ross. "You have to do what we do and go to China."
New York's attorney general is investigating the provenance of the corpses, but Ohio's Attorney General Marc Dann says there does not appear to be any violation of state law here.
The controversy has done nothing to hurt attendance at the Museum Center – more than 22,000 people have already paid to see the "Bodies" exhibition in Cincinnati.
