(asked by Mr. Pau Simon from the Institute of Plastination, Da Lian, China)
with answers from Peter Rosenthal, chairman of the federal association of body donors, a society registered in Germany (Vorsitzender des Bundesverbandes der Körperspender e. V.)
A1: The reasons are:
.... they do not want to be burned or buried (hate the idea),
.... they have no relatives to look after the grave (or do not want to burden
them with that task),
.... they want to save money (in Germany it is compulsory to burn or bury the
deceased. To rent a grave for 15 years costs about 1000 to 3000 euros (for a
coffin or an urn), depending on the location. The funeral or cremation will cost
around 500 to 2000 euros, depending on the clothing and the kind of coffin. In
addition there are the expenses for guests, the parson, minister or priest..…
The costs of plastination include the transportation (approx. 1 to 2 euros per
km) and the rent and cleaning of the coffin used for transportation (about 200
euros). Thus plastination is normally cheaper.
A2: I think, most of us don't think of autopsy or of being skinned in connection with plastination, but we may think of being sliced once our body is plastinated. The reason is that the words autopsy or dissection or skinning have a negative meaning in the German society. Many donors want to be plastinated as a whole body (knowing that their body will be skinned) and they don’t like the idea of their body being sliced, however they are not scared by the idea.
A3: People in Germany know that a company must be profitable (including the one of Prof. Gunther von Hagens), otherwise it will go bankrupt which would mean the end of the company. So we know about the importance of profitability. And the majority of us are happy to know that the exhibition produces good profits. At the same time we know that we donate our body. This is similar to the donation of a body organ or body part which is not remunerated. None of us would want to sell our body. Most questions about money come from outside of the group of body donors and especially from Eastern countries (Poland, Czechia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union), obviously from people who are rather poor and see the big money in the Western countries.
A4: I don't know how much influence there is as most of those discussions take place in the families. But sometimes we notice the consequences. Less than 1 % of such family discussions lead to a withdrawal of the donation. However, at the same time there will be additional donors in the families as a consequence of those discussions.
A5: I have no statistics, but from the discussions with the donors one gets the impression that most of us (more than 90 %) have become donors after the visit of an exhibition. And the exhibition briefly explains the procedure of plastination. Some of us have seen the work in Heidelberg. In fact, once a year there is the possibility for donors and their families to watch the work of plastination. I am there every year. So I have seen the camel being taken out of the acetone bath and then taken into the polymer bath. I also saw the vein plastinate of the head in its last step of production in Heidelberg, and I saw the first samples of plastinates of bones and veins, and so on. However, not everybody wants to know exactly how the procedure works, neither before nor after having signed for the donation.
A6: For me it is to be burned, but I think most of them don't like the idea of burial or cremation, often they don’t have a second choice.
A7: I think there is no difference between state-owned or private institutions, that is unimportant, the profits are not our problem (see answer 3, a state-owned institution needs no profit, wheras a private one must make one). For many donors it is also unimportant whether their body will be used for medical training (we know that in most cases it is not used for research work) or for a popular scientific anatomy exhibition. About 1/3 of the donors prefer the use for medical training and a slightly larger number prefers the exhibition.
A8: I am not sure whether you are right about the last destination of Da Lian. But it’s possible (it is also possible that in the future there will be more plastination institutes worldwide). Today it is Heidelberg or Da Lian, and we do not know whether the body will go into an exhibition and travel around the world or, if it becomes an object for medical training, we do not know where that will be. What we all know (whether we are Christian or not) is that the body is dead, it is merely a shell which we no longer need. With this thing we can do whatever we wish (and although it is only a shell, most donors do not like the idea of cremation or burial). For many it is a nice idea to travel around the world as a plastinate. I don’t have a better answer to your question about the trip to plastination city in China.
A9: I do not think so, but we will discuss this question at the next donors’ meeting. The most important point about the use of the body in a public autopsy is that the donor knows about this possibility and has the choice to say yes or no.
A10: There is a religious impact, but not a very strong one. The Christian church, when speaking of immortality or resurrection, means something that happens to the soul (or the spirit), nothing real or precise that happens to the body. Some martyrs were torn to pieces and had no body left when they were dead. Religion too says that the body is a shell only which is useless after death. It is possible that some people think of immortality and this is also a subject for journalists…
I believe if a donor thinks of immortality, that person has a problem since nobody knows where his or her body will go, which plastinate he or she will become, and perhaps he or she will be cut into slices or will be used in individual parts (organs, joints, …). That person’s immortality is only known to him or herself in a very personal and private way.
Aktualisiert:
2004-11-10