Here in New York, you see the posters everywhere, and it’s jarring: people striking a pose, maybe dribbling a basketball or reading a book. But they don’t have any skin. And you can see their organs. It’s life, seen in a way you’ve never seen it before. Or maybe, in fact, it’s death.

Zenit reported on this phenomenon last month, and I posted excerpts from the report. But the reporter made several serious errors; there are, in fact, separate exhibits of bodies, operated by separate companies, and the reporter confused the two. The communications director for BODY WORLDS has asked me to publish the following correction:

Father Flynn confused “Bodies the Exhibition” with the BODY WORLDS exhibition.

As the Los Angeles Times accurately reported, the BODY WORLDS exhibitions only use bodies that were donated for the exhibitions. There are no Chinese bodies in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions, nor are there concerns that the bodies in the BODY WORLDS exhibitions are from Chinese prisoners.

These are two separate companies and two separate exhibitions. The BODY WORLDS exhibitions are managed by the Institute for Plastination in Germany and presented by physician and anatomist, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who is also the inventor of Plastination and creator of BODY WORLDS. Dr. von Hagens has no affiliation with nor is he the promoter of any exhibition that does not bear his name.

Premier Exhibitions, a publicly traded company, is the company that runs “Bodies…The Exhibition,” it is the exhibition that uses Chinese bodies and
the company that had a settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office.