SURPRISE ME
The wife was reading today's Hicks on Six, about the Body Worlds exhibit.
"Darling," she called over to her husband, reading the sports section.
"When you die, do you want to be buried, cremated or Plastinated (see below)."
"I don't know," he said, checking last night's scores. "Surprise me."
PLASTINATION
Yes, it'll be fabulously educational, steering thousands of impressionable youths to medical/anatomical careers, and will present such compelling evidence that thousands may quit smoking.
But the attraction of Body Worlds 1, the biggest, most razzle-dazzle show the Telus World of Science has ever mounted, still borders on the macabre.
Dead people, preserved in the name of science through a process known as "Plastination," are set up as skinless sculptures in action - the runner, the jumping dancer, the basketball player.
Biologically speaking, Body Worlds is an explosive breakthrough in education.
To wander among the 200 "sculptures" that'll open June 13 and run to October 13, will be to learn more about our bodies and how everything works inside us than we'll ever have known before.
But it will be weird. These were once all live people, preserved for eternity through a process where fluids and fats are replaced with resins and polymers. At night, when all the living have left the building ...
Most of us want to donate organs once we're dead. Then most of us opt for cremation. These people, in the name of education and science, have willingly donated their entire bodies for the Plastination process.
The Telus World of Science has reams of information of the ethics of it all.
But it's still disconcerting that Body Worlds, for all its high-falutin' ethical statements, is a for-profit company, partnering with the Telus World of Science with the view of making a profit for both.
Will I go, the day the exhibit opens?
You bet!
The combination of astounding insight into the human body and the weirdness of skinned life-like cadavers frozen in time is just too compelling.
Tickets are $26.50 for adults, and you can buy them now at bodyworldsedmonton.com.
