Human body exhibitions: public opinion of young individuals and contemporary bioethics.

PURPOSE

The exhibitions of plastinated cadavers and organs have attracted millions of visitors globally, while raising serious controversy about their content and purpose of implementation.

METHODS

We performed a survey based study on 500 randomly chosen individuals, aged 18- to 35-year old, in order to access their opinion regarding the conduction of such shows as well as body donation for scientific purposes.

RESULTS

We found that 46.3% of the participants had moral concerns, and 46.1% did not. Religious and philosophical beliefs concerned 21.8% of the sample, while 28% believed that the exhibits may affect visitors' mental health. Human dignity violation was stressed by 21.6%, whereas 26.6% disagreed with body donation to science.

CONCLUSIONS

The desire for qualitative-guided anatomy education is evident from the highly popular plastinated body and specimen exhibitions. Hence, additional focused effort could be provided to educate the public about normal and pathological anatomy in order to amend their life-style. This could be effected by certified anatomy demonstrators in graduated steps according to the cohort's age, education, occupation, and health status.