(Minghui.org) A message regarding the mysterious sources of the human specimens made by the Von Hagens Dalian Plastination, Ltd. was recently forwarded widely among Chinese netizens. Bo Xilai, a once prominent Chinese politician and former Chongqing City Commissioner, was accused of approving the company while he was the mayor of Dalian, from 1993 to 2000. The public wants to know the sources of the human cadavers and at the same time is condemning the profiteering from the specimens.
According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), while the trial of Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai is still in progress, Bo’s activities while he was the mayor of Dalian were exposed. On Sunday August 12, 2012 a message about the Von Hagens Dalian Plastination company was being exchanged among Internet users in China. The German company specializes in making human specimens. In the factory, the cadavers are plasticized and their skin removed. The specimens were given facial expression and specific postures. It was said that a finished specimen costs up to one million U.S. dollars. The world tour of the company’s products, called Body Worlds, has received much criticism wherever the exhibition has gone.
It is known that Von Hagens is a German-owned company, and the owner is an heir of a German Nazi. In 1999, Bo, then mayor of Dalian, approved the registration of the company himself. The company has manufactured tens of thousands of plastinated human specimens in numerous postures. One of the cadavers stands holding its own skin. Another is a woman lying down with her belly cut open and a fetus in the uterus is clearly displayed. All of the bodies came from China. Many wondered where they came from. According to a January 2004 edition of Germany’s influential magazine, Der Spiegel, the company had purchased the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners, and that the corpses had bullet holes in their heads. Some netizens suspected that the bodies came from crematoriums, missing persons, and prisons. Bo’s role was to provide smooth transition of the cadavers between these places and the Von Hagens company.
A Chinese doctor who wished to remain anonymous told RFA on Monday, August 13 that executed prisoners definitely could not meet the enormous demands for all the medical colleges in China. “Then perhaps the students can use the patients who died in big hospitals. As for the bodies of the old, poor, or homeless people who died after they were dragged from the streets or the trains to the hospitals, I would not know what happened to them,” said the doctor.
Writer Chen Lan said in her blog, “Body donation is a tightly controlled process in and outside of China. The donor must volunteer for the process. The frequency of body donation in China is extremely low due to cultural reasons, and hence even the medical colleges are extremely short of cadavers. Without agreement from the donor or the immediate family, it is illegal even for the cadavers to be used for medical purposes, let alone being used for commercial exhibitions. The deceased must be respected as well.”
Before Falun Gong media reported that Bo was involved in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China and actively participated in removing their organs for profit, many suspected that some of these human remains came from Falun Gong practitioners.
Wang, a Chinese government employee who’s been investigating the illegal sale of organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, spoke to RFA on Monday. Wang admitted that such accusations may very well be correct. “We know not only that bodies are used illegally, but there are also stolen organs for sale. Some government reports lead us to believe that such things definitely exist,” said Wang.
Some people condemned the Von Hagens world tours exhibiting specimens that the company made from unsolicited bodies. They said that it was immoral to pose them in strange gestures. A netizen commented, “Such action is a severe insult to the remains, and is the action of demons!”
