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. --- 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. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17426