Body part show: Prof Gunther von Hagens

The BBC's Chris Hogg put your questions to Professor Gunther von Hagens in a forum live from the exhibition.

To watch coverage of the forum, select the link below:

  Click here to watch the forum  

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4,500 people have offered to give their bodies to Professor Gunther von Hagens to be used to display how the human body works.

His show, Body Worlds, which contains 175 body parts and 25 corpses exhibited in a highly graphic manner, has prompted critics to call his art a "shameless Victorian freak show".

One of the pieces in the exhibition is the bisected corpse of an eight months-pregnant woman with her womb cut open, revealing the foetus.

Will you be going to the show? Do you think human bodies should be put on display like this and called art? Why do you think Body Worlds is so controversial?

The exhibition is at the Atlantis Gallery, in Brick Lane, London and runs until 29 September.

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Highlights of the interview:

Newshost:
Louise UK: What was the motivation that made you think of creating such art?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
Twenty years as an anatomist at the University of Heidelberg, I pleased the students. But over the weekend I'd get fire-fighters, nurses, first aid workers through our exhibits and I noticed they had a vacuum of knowledge of anatomy. At this time of history, lay people are very knowledgeable about the body. In the media they hear about and read about and get pictures about heart infarction, about smoker's lung but they never see how it looks in reality. This had to be changed and therefore I am here to democratise anatomy.

Newshost:
James Connor, Southampton, England: What motivated you to want to show people this display? For example, was it a desire to educate or shock?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
When you look at the reaction of people here, nobody is shocked - they are surprised, they are able to build up a new kind of body pride. Certainly it's not dusty anatomy here - it's a kind of event anatomy - it's entertainment.

Newshost:
Vincent Poole, Germany: I understand that you said in a recent interview that this work is NOT art. If so, why are you holding the exhibition in an art gallery and not the science museum?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
This is not an art gallery, this is an old brewery. It was used for art and now it is used for anatomy. Actually, the medical museum is not big enough - we needed 2,500 square metres to show at least a minimum of what the lay people wanted to see.

Newshost:
Rob Ponsford, Horsham, West Sussex: Why did you think in the first place that the public would be so interested in this and did you think that it would be of such interest that you would have so many millions of people who've been to see this?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
Absolutely. I would be bankrupt today if I would not have known this to be the case. When we had the first show in Germany, the review expert told me a maximum of 40,000 would come. But when 800,000 came I knew from the lay people there was a vacuum of knowledge. They are here to see what the experts have enjoyed for centuries.

Newshost:
Nikoleta, Manchester, England: Who where the first people that donated their bodies for your art and how did you persuade them to do so?

I would imagine that once you have the body you have to get on and begin that process quickly before decay starts. Who were the first people?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
It takes really no pressure of time - in summer two weeks and in winter four weeks - I don't need the body to be fresh.

From the beginning when I invented this process back in 1977 many people who came to the exhibition and they enjoyed it so much that they signed up. When the show was in Germany, every day about 5 people signed up after seeing the exhibition. So far we have 4,500 donors - so I have no shortage of bodies. But those are the bodies from people who enjoy it.

Newshost:
Have you had people who've been to see the exhibition here in London signing up?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
It is now the third day, already we've enjoyed already having 8,000 visitors. One Englishman signed up who saw the show in Belgium and he said it was the beauty which compelled me to decide a better fate for himself than being buried or cremated.

Newshost:
Caroline Fraser, London, UK: How do the relatives of the people who donate their bodies feel about this in general? Have any of them come to see their dead relatives on exhibition?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
It is very important that the bodies remain anonymous otherwise I would turn this into a sort of post-mortem museum. This is not a place for mourning. It is not an illegal cemetery - it is a hall of enlightenment and when you need to learn you cannot mourn. Therefore, for good reasons, I withheld the personal data - the relatives come, they enjoy looking but they don't know who is who and I think this is very justified.

Newshost:
JC, Los Angeles: What do you think of the people that donate their bodies to you for use with this exhibition?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
Every year we have a body donors' meeting at the site of the exhibition. We talk freely. They think like I think, like my family think because I also want to be plastinated. I think it is a kind of secularised burial. It is a new alternative, rather than being buried or cremated but for me it is better because I do something for enlightenment - I do something for future generations.

Newshost:
Toby Gowen, Boalsburg, USA: Which of the two sexes have been more likely to want to donate their bodies to your art show? Why do you think that is?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
About 15% more women donate their bodies and about 10 - 20% more women come to the exhibits. Why? Because women are more dependent on their bodies in terms of beauty, cosmetics - in terms of childbearing and raising children - they are just more preoccupied with the body so it's understandable.

Newshost:
Jason Anderson, London, UK: I saw the full exhibition in Berlin last summer. Have you had to leave some parts out of the London exhibition in an attempt to soothe the over-sensitive (and misunderstanding) nature of large parts of the UK population?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
We have less space here. Indeed, I left some parts out because I don't want to provoke - I want to enlighten. So I welcome a certain degree of curiosity because I know I can transform the real interest in the human body. But I'm not here to shock the British audience - I am here not even to educate but to give the possibility to educate them.

Newshost:
Nikolai K, Edinburgh, Scotland: Don't you think that a lot of the objections you have received are warranted? By chopping up bodies and plastinating them - you can obviously appreciate how some people might see this as not exactly the actions of a balanced individual. What is your reaction to this, please?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
In this way, we would have also called Leonardo da Vinci and other Middle Age masters - in which tradition I see myself as fully unbalanced because what they did they even went out at night stealing, without consent, the bodies from the gallows, dissected them up, hide them - like Leonardo, under his bed - and in this way they opened up medical science for us and now we enjoy a double lifespan. In this way then I am not very well balanced but in real life it is necessary in a society to break taboos - a society cannot survive without taboos but a society cannot develop without breaching taboos. I am one who breaches taboos.

Newshost:
Alan Cousins, Brighton, England Are you going to donate your body when you pass away?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
Of course with pleasure, with a thrill because for me it is an honour be plastinated and so to continue serving anatomy and serving enlightenment.

Newshost:
But the big question is who would do it once you are gone?

Professor Gunther von Hagens:
I know that my fellow colleagues would enjoy fulfilling my wish to expend 1,500 working hours to transform me into a real good piece which will be on earth for a few centuries perhaps. Plastination is a kind of consolation in that it changes the face of death.