Dr Death’s Body Art For The Home — If You Have The Stomach For It

Forget the flat-screen plasma television — why not hang a cross-section of your late husbands stomach on the living room wall? Or prop a slice of your dead terrier on the mantelpiece?

These and other macabre interior decoration ideas have been thrown into play by Gunther von Hagens, sometimes dubbed Dr Death, the German anatomist who plans to put some of his chemically treated body parts on sale to the public.

His touring Body Worlds exhibitions of preserved corpses manipulated into everyday poses — running, playing chess, cradling a glass of whisky, riding a bicycle — have been seen by more than 20 million visitors. Some of the bodies, protected from decay by a process known as plastination, are depicted climbing out of their own skin.

The doctor now plans to sell 150,000 body parts privately, not just to universities or clinics. “A collection of 16 transparent horizontal slices of a human (head, neck, torso, extremities) Standard quality (fragile): €1,400,” says the price list. “Robust quality (unbreakable): €2,800.”

Dr von Hagens says that he will not sell the body parts if it damages the dignity of the corpse.

“That means forbidding the use of the body sections as, for example, placemats for cocktail glasses,” he says, “and if the owner wants to get rid of the body bits he will be required to cremate them and not simply throw them in the bin.”

How the anatomist, who has been embroiled in legal rows in the past, expects to enforce such conditions remains to be seen. One fundamental problem is that a corpse is made over to him often on condition that it serves the purpose of medical education. So far he has been promised 8,568 corpses and has 531 in stock, all swimming in baths of alcohol awaiting his chemical treatment.

Corpses are collected from the home of the deceased by a “bodymobile” and taken to Guben, on the German-Polish border, where Dr von Hagens has set up his headquarters. He holds donor conferences in the preparation hall, explaining how people can continue to make an impact on the world even after death.

The bodies will be sold in slices — usually about 2mm (0.8in) thick — after being cut up by a high-speed saw. When the parts go on the market next month a slice of stomach will be on sale for €350 (£262) — if the stomach is a normal size. Stomachs of people who weighed 210kg (463lb) will be sold for €2,500, reflecting the greater work invested in its preparation.

The way out of the legal dilemmas is to customise the corpses, rather than receive the body parts of a stranger. The doctor, a shrewd businessman with the instincts of a showman, calculates that pet owners are a particularly promising market.

“The little dog can then hang as a transparent slice on the wall and look at his master for all eternity, “ he says. Cost of a sliced lapdog: €460. A millimetre-thin slice of a horses head will be offered for €900-€1,800.

Dr von Hagens flew into controversy in 2002 when he performed the first public autopsy in Britain for 170 years. Policemen sat in the packed audience to determine whether he was in breach of the 1984 Anatomy Act but no charges were brought.

Der Spiegel magazine accused him later of acquiring the corpses of executed prisoners from China. The doctor took out an injunction against the magazine and, again, no charges were brought — but he did cremate several of the bodies after finding unexplained skull wounds.

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