Dead Bodies as "Art"

David C. Stolinsky, M.D.
Feb. 1, 2005

Each year over a million babies are aborted in the United States. Each year an increasing number of elderly or disabled people are starved and dehydrated to death in what is called "euthanasia." This should mean "good death." It is hard to see how dying of hunger and thirst is "good," but who are we to argue with the experts?

Each year "ethicists" like Peter Singer teach us that we have the right to murder imperfect or unwanted babies, defective children and disabled adults. But rather than booing these "ethicists" off the stage, we appoint them to professorships at leading universities.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo. Her husband wants to starve and dehydrate to death this brain-damaged woman, so he can marry his girlfriend. To add irony to tragedy, "schiavo" means "slave" in Italian.

One would think that this decline in our reverence for human life was fast enough to suit even the most avid proponents of the "right to die." One would expect that even they would be satisfied with the speed of our slide down the slippery slope into the culture of death.

One would be wrong.

Citizens of Los Angeles are lined up around the block to see an exhibit, and to bring their children to see it. The exhibit is in the California Science Center, located in a city park. This is all the more reason to expect that it is educational and suited for its intended audience, including families with children.

Once again, one would be wrong.

The exhibit is claimed to teach the wonder of the human body and its complex construction. This would be true if the exhibit were made up of plastic models of the body and its internal structure. But the exhibit is made up of real human corpses, skinned and covered with plastic.

Even worse, the corpses are in lifelike poses. One is kicking a soccer ball. Yes, this illustrates how muscles work to help us move. But it also blurs the line between the living and the dead. Dead people don’t play soccer, after all. But who cares?

• Parents feel no hesitation in taking their children to see real dead bodies in "artistic" poses.

• Television news directors see nothing wrong with showing cadavers on TV while children are watching.

• Newspaper editors find nothing dubious about printing color pictures of dead human beings, with text praising the exhibit. And now there is another ad promising "All New Specimens!"

• City officials have no qualms about allowing cut up corpses to be exhibited on city property.

• Government officials have no objection to the importation of corpses and body parts of unidentifiable people without death certificates, on the word of promoters that all the bodies were donated voluntarily.

• Clergy find nothing objectionable about degrading human beings, created in God’s image, to the status of slabs of meat for sale in a butcher shop.

• Nobody notices anything odd about the fact that most of the dead bodies are of well-muscled, young-appearing people with no visible injuries. Where are bodies of withered elderly or sick people? Where are broken limbs or gunshot or stab wounds? Where did the "artist" obtain so many bodies of young, healthy people with no obvious trauma?

• Nobody sees anything inconsistent about commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz, the leading Nazi death camp, and the same week entertaining the public with dead people imported from Germany by a German "artist."

No, nobody seems to notice anything wrong here. And that’s what’s really wrong.

I can accept that an "artist," especially a German, might enjoy posing corpses "artistically." After all, art and music are often devoid of any ethical content. The commandant of Auschwitz was said to listen to classical music each night. Perhaps Mozart helped him carry out his "duties" more efficiently.

I can also accept that many Americans find the exhibit interesting. After all, the various "CSI" shows are among the most popular on TV. Crime and death have a morbid fascination for many of us.

I can even accept that given our irreligious, value-free educational system, many people find nothing sacred about the human being or the human body. Why should they? They never learned that we are all God’s children, made in His image and therefore deserving of great respect.

But what I can’t accept is that nobody protests.

• Where are the clergy, who of all people should know that desecration of human bodies is a gross insult to their Maker?

• Where are the Jewish organizations, which surely should remember what happens when human beings are degraded into objects to be used for profit?

• Where are the veterans’ organizations, whose members liberated Nazi death camps and carry the awful memories to their graves?

• Where are the politicians, who forbade city property to be used for a gun show, but allow it to be used for a corpse show?

Where, indeed, is anybody who protests?

There would have been an uproar if dead dogs and cats were skinned and put on exhibition. Predictably, the equating of humans and animals has resulted not in better treatment for animals, but in worse treatment for humans.

Human beings deserve to be buried with respect, and with prayers if they were religious. If they willed their bodies to science, the bodies deserve to be studied by medical students, then buried with respect. Those who don’t know these truths need to be educated. Those with children have the responsibility to educate them.

The Holocaust didn’t begin the day people actually started to push men, women and children into gas chambers and ovens. It began earlier, when people stopped seeing other people as created in God’s image. The lessons of history are clear – ignoring them can be hazardous to your health.

Is there anyone left in this country who has the moral courage to stand up and shout, "No! Human beings are not just pieces of meat. If you are so stupid and ignorant of history as to teach the next generation that they are nothing more than chunks of flesh, then you deserve what you will surely get."

Dead bodies as "art"? Not on my watch.

Dr. Stolinsky writes on political and social issues. He may be contacted at dstol@prodigy.net.

www.stolinsky.com