xc - COTD3

Before going to the bodies exhibit I was very skeptical on what my experience there was going to be like. I am extremely squeamish when it comes to body parts and blood so I already new that this was going to be a challenge for me. Surprisingly I found this experience fascinating and very educational but at the same time it also made me think about a lot of questions and made me very unsure about the morals of this exhibit.
The very first emotion that I had when seeing the their bodies was total disgust, I was actually contemplating leaving but considering I spent $30 for the admission ticket and I didn’t want to look like the squeamish one in front of all my friends, so I decided to tough it out. At first the experience for me was sort of like a bad car accident you know you shouldn’t look but you cant look away. For the longest time I was staring into the eyes of what looked like an Asian man in the sitting and thinking position and at a split second I went from thinking, “ this is weird and cool” to thinking,“ at one time this was a living person”. I can understand the argument that this museum could be for educational purposes and a lot of people learn visually so going to this museum of bodies would be more educational than looking at the book “ The human anatomy”. This whole experience got me thinking, in order for someone to make this museum they had to get the bodies from another country? Why? In the United States there has been 1,173 legal executions since September 1 2009, that’s enough bodies to make 5 museums, considering the NYC museum has 200 bodies. So why china? My first thought was there would be no way people would go to this museum if they knew it was American bodies because that would just make us look barbaric. So I decided to try in find out why they used bodies from china and the answer became very clear to me, because there is no real answer. They actually never make it clear where these bodies actually come from, all they say is “Although all the bodies are unclaimed and from the Chinese police, Premier could not independently verify more about them, such as whether the bodies are of prisoners that were executed by the Chinese government.” “This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.” When I went to the website of Bodies nowhere could I find a explanation of where there bodies came from, the condition these people were in before they died, and what was the cause of execution, all valid questions I would like to know before looking at an exhibit I know nothing about. One argument I heard constantly on Internet forums, not even a website I can properly quote was that these prisoners have signed a document stating that the Chinese government can use there bodies for experiments. Assuming that’s true that still does not explain why we can’t do that to our own American executed bodies. At least using American bodies would make the exhibit more interracial. I believe the Chinese government is lying about the conditions of the bodies, lying about the sort of treatment these prisoners have had and the owners of this museum know it. They know by using American bodies the public would be so far up there ass they would never be able to get this museum up and running.
In conclusion I found the Bodies exhibit very fascinating, but at the same time it made me feel like what I was looking at was morally wrong because I don’t know the full truth of where these bodies actually come from, and I suspect I never will. I think the idea of bodies is interesting but I find the search of the truth behind bodies more interesting.