Body Worlds

This may seem a little gruesome, but the Body Worlds exhibit at the Salt Lake City Library is awesome! If you get queasy over this stuff, I say suck it up and go. It is so cool! I was able to go last Saturday with some people from work, and we spent over two fascinating hours there. The exhibits travel around the country and are made up of people who donate their bodies for science purposes. Basically, the process of "plastination" that is done to these bodies involves taking out all the degradable stuff of the body and replacing it with plastic components, without losing its shape or color. A man named Gunther von Hagens, who grew up in Gera, East Germany, came up with the process. I was fascinated by his story since he grew up in the south area of the Berlin Mission, where I served. He tried to escape from East Germany in 1968, but was caught and put in prison. He was bailed out for 40,000 Marks, roughly $20,000. He then went to medical school in Luebeck, West Germany, and invented the process of "plastination" in 1977. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Von_Hagens for more info.