Though the thought of a display full of dead bodies and the organs that fit within them may seem like Frankenstein's sideshow, Bodies Revealed, a truly scientific exhibition, is now on display at Union Station. Unlike Frankenstein's laboratory, the body parts are not bonded to form a monster but instead are tastefully presented for the public to get a leg up on anatomy.

As patrons tour the exhibit, each of the intricate systems that sustain life in the body is put on display, including the reproductive, digestive, and respiratory systems. The major distinction between this exhibit and other museums is the use of real corpses that have gone through a process of plastination.

Plastination is a process of preserving bodies through the use of acetone to drain the blood and other natural liquids from the body and replace them with polymer. This process maintains the original shape of the organs and preserves them indefinitely as if they were made entirely of an indestructible material. The only noticeable problem with the process is that it leaves the organs shiny, as though they were covered in varnish.

This exhibit put its best foot forward by removing the skin to show the organs and layers of tissue that lie beneath. The innards have also been dissected to display specific organs that are connected within the internal systems.

Among the many diseases and health issues on display, this exhibit highlights the results of smoking on the body in a disturbing presentation of normal lungs and heart compared to those of a smoker. Looking at this display forces smokers to realize what they are doing to their body in a way that other media could only capture in photographs. The display even includes a clear box in which persuaded smokers can throw out their cigarettes with pride, because it takes guts to quit smoking.

Before entering the Fetal Development Gallery, visitors are cautioned of its contents and given the option to bypass it. On one wall, a woman is shown with a fetus in her womb. Along another wall is a display of fetuses suspended in liquid so that the tiny bones that one day become operating arms and legs can be seen, highlighted by colored polymer.

No bones about it, this room carries the most controversy of any in the exhibit because of the uncertainty of where the fetuses might have come from. Bodies Revealed assures that the child died in utero of natural causes.

Even more controversial is the source of the rest of the bodies in the exhibit. The company responsible for producing Bodies Revealed, Premier Exhibitions, avers that the bodies on display all willingly gave their bodies to science and died of natural causes. However, another exhibit, Bodies: The Exhibition, currently on display in Cincinnati, uses unclaimed and unidentified bodies that were obtained from a plastination lab in the Chinese city of Dalian.

Brian Ross, reporter for ABC's 20/20, traveled to China to talk with the president of this lab. The president denied any relationship with Premier Exhibitions, and claimed not to have given human bodies to any company putting them on display in the United States. Ross even says he found evidence that the bodies are those of executed prisoners bought from the Chinese black market.

In Kansas City, Catholic authorities have deemed Bodies Revealed as "unseemly and inappropriate" for Catholic school field trips. The leaders say, "We believe that the use of human bodies in this way fails to respect the persons involved."

Perhaps this exhibit has crossed a line of decency that does not give the body the proper respect that it deserves, but the display of real human bodies instead of models is incredibly important to the medical community and those who study the body. The question is whether the bodies should be put on display for the general public.

Though Bodies Revealed has gotten under the skin of many critics, its overall purpose is to encourage people to better understand their bodies and to get to the very heart of who they are, in a physical sense. Despite the exhibit's attempts to be educational, it proves to be more of a display of the oddity of the human body than to actually inform the audience of scientific processes.

Bodies Revealed will be on exhibit at Union Station through September 1, 2008. Tickets range from $19 for children to $24 for adults and can be purchased online at http://www.unionstation.org, by calling 816.460.2020, or at the Union Station Ticket Counter.

For additional information on Bodies Revealed, check out http://www.bodiesrevealed.com.

Copyright 2008 Metropolitan Community College