Dr Death's body art for the home — if you have the stomach for it

[Max]

Dr Death's body art for the home — if you have the stomach for it




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Roger Boyes in Berlin

Forget the flat-screen plasma television — why not hang a cross-section of your late husband's 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.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3307869.ece

[rfbdorf]

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

Seems to me he's already gone well beyond that.
- Richard