X-Message-Number: 17426
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 23:41:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Plastination

Anyone know if this report is accurate when it claims that the process is
accurate "to the cellular level"? If so, nanotech true-believers might
prefer this over current methods of cryopreservation. And the maintenance
costs would be negligible.

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Reuters  |  ABCNEWS.com

Thursday August 30 10:23 AM ET

Dead Bodies Exhibit Offers Alternative to Burial

BERLIN (Reuters) - Are you fascinated by the idea of being preserved for
posterity? Do you want to save money on being buried? Spare your relatives
from having to tend your grave?

If the answer to any of these questions is ``yes,'' you might like to sign
the form from which they are taken: a declaration promising to donate your
body to the Institute for Plastination for preservation after your death.

Thousands of Germans have signed away their bodies after seeing a
controversial exhibition displaying real human corpses, cut and sliced,
which has attracted more than 1.3 million visitors since it opened in
Berlin in February.

The bodies on display have been preserved indefinitely by impregnation
with silicone rubber, epoxy or polyester resins in a patented process
called ``plastination,'' invented in 1978.

The resulting ``plastinates'' have advantages over other preservation
methods of durability and authenticity -- tissue structures remain
unchanged down to microscopic levels, making plastinates useful teaching
tools for medical students.

Since the donation program began in 1985, some 4,000 people have donated
their bodies to the institute, most of them German, but also several
Austrians, Swiss, French, Dutch and Spanish. About a third said they have
no objection to their bodies being exhibited in public and some are
already on show.

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