This matter relates to the Bodies exhibition currently taking place in Dublin of which, no doubt, the Minister of State is aware. I want the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism to outline the rules, regulations and guidelines in place governing exhibitions that take place in Ireland, indicate whether such rules have been breached by the Bodies exhibition, indicate whether such an exhibition involving the display of human bodies requires permission to be granted and, in the absence of such requirements, whether the Government intends to establish requirements to govern such exhibitions. I do not know whether every aspect of the matter I raise is capable of being addressed by the Minister of State.
The question of which authority, if any, approved the exhibition in Ireland is key and needs to be considered in the following comparative context. Dr. Roy Glover, the medical director of the exhibition and associate professor emeritus of anatomy at the University of Michigan, claims it is common practice that unclaimed corpses are donated for education and research. As the Minister of State will be aware, the Bodies exhibition features corpses of humans of Chinese origin. The Irish position is very stringent in this regard and unclaimed corpses in Ireland do not end up in medical schools. Only those who express interest in donating their bodies to science and who give explicit consent may be accepted for research purposes to anatomy departments. This was verified for me recently by the anatomy department of Trinity College.
In light of our context of respect for the human body and our standards, which obviously differ from those Dr. Glover would espouse, who examined on our behalf the origin of the bodies being used? Who examined the manner in which they were to be displayed in what is a commercial exhibition? Who approved this process? What was done to establish the provenance of the persons involved and what assurances, if any, were sought in regard to the propriety of their being obtained in the first place?
The exhibition is run by an Atlanta-based company called Premier Exhibitions and it was opened originally in Tampa, Florida, in 2005. The website of the exhibition states the bodies are "persons who lived in China and died from natural causes". It states these bodies were unclaimed after death and, under Chinese law, were then delivered to a medical school for education purposes. In this case, it was the Dalian Medical University of Plastination Laboratories in the Republic of China. The website claims the persons on display died of natural causes, yet in May of last year, on foot of an investigation initiated by New York State Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, the organisers admitted they could not prove the bodies were not those of tortured prisoners, stating:
There is no written record that any of those persons consented to the plastination and exhibition of their bodies prior to their deaths. Rather, these bodies were unclaimed at death, collected by the Chinese Bureau of Police, and delivered to the Dalian Medical University.
The Irish Museum Association confirms it does not have any relevant material concerning this exhibition on its website or in its biannual newsletter. It confirmed also that it had not been notified by the exhibitors. We should not ignore the fact that the commercial nature of this exhibition is evident through its promotion of the purchasing of merchandise and catalogues related to the exhibition. The exhibitors have a hell of an advertising budget, judging by the posters advertising the event all over the place.
If there are no guidelines governing an anatomical exhibition of this kind, the matter needs to be addressed urgently. This display of persons unknown is being presented in a very commercial manner with a distinct entertainment edge. This has the potential to devalue and disrespect the human body, especially if it cannot be established that the exhibited bodies did not come to be dead by foul means.
Bodies involved in dissection research in Ireland are used for educational purposes for a given period and are buried about two years after donation. However, there appears to be no time limit to the display of the bodies in question and the continuation of this exhibition.
Our museums have displayed the remains of deceased persons and sometimes murdered persons. They date from a long time ago and nobody can establish the exact means of death. The concern regarding the Bodies exhibition is that the bodies could be of recent provenance. It is clear from what we know that those who obtained them did not adhere to the stringent standards that apply in Ireland regarding the use of bodies of deceased persons for any kind of event, be it educational or related to entertainment. What has the Government done to establish the provenance of the bodies and whether any issue of propriety arose? Is there relevant legislation to guide us in this area? If not, does the Government intend to introduce appropriate legislation so such an exhibition cannot take place in the future without being vetted properly in advance by an appropriate authority?
