Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Pky
Buffalo, New York 14211
Monday - Saturday 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
I believe it is $22.00, however, there are $3.00 coupons available at Wilson Farms (just ask cashier) and in Artvoice, both online and in the paper.
There are deep discounts for Students (with ID) and Seniors 62+
Also, children rates.
Anyone planning on going? You should, it looks amazing!
It is 'Body Worlds 3 and The Story of the Heart'
for an idea of what it is about..
Real bodies!
Preserved with "plastination"
Plastination is a technique used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample
Pics snagged from Google images:
For anyone thinking about going, there is a discount for groups of 15 or more.
following text boxes contain information taken from the Buffalo Museum of Science website:
[box]
Groups of 15 or more are welcome to purchase tickets to BODY WORLDS at the group rate if purchased in advance. BODY WORLDS & The Story of the Heart are "timed tickets," valid only for a specified admission date and time.It takes an average of 1-2 hours to go through the exhibit; therefore the last ticket will be sold an hour and a half before the exhibit closes. Visitors are encouraged to arrive 15 - 30 minutes prior to the time printed on their ticket, particularly on weekends.Minimum group size of 15 is required to be eligible for group rates.
Adult (Ages 19+) $17.50
BODY WORLDS HOURS BEGINNING JULY 9
Monday - Saturday 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
PLEASE NOTE: The last BODY WORLDS ticket is sold from the BMS Box Office an hour and a half before the exhibit closes for the day. Due to anticipated crowds, we highly recommend that tickets are purchased online in advance. Visitors are encouraged to arrive 30 minutes prior to the time printed on their ticket.[/box]
About Dr. Gunther von Hagens- inventor of Plastination and creator of Body Worlds:
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Gunther von Hagens' life reads like an archetypal scientist's resume-distinguished by early precocity, scholarship, discovery, experimentation, and invention. It is also the profile of a man shaped by extraordinary events, and marked by defiance and daring.
Von Hagens' two year imprisonment by East German authorities for political reasons, his release after a $20,000 payment by the West German government, his pioneering invention that halts decomposition of the body after death and preserves it for didactic eternity, his collaboration with donors including his best friend, who willed and entrusted their bodies to him for dissection and public display, and his role as a teacher carrying on the tradition of Renaissance anatomists, make his a remarkable life in science.
Anatomist, inventor of Plastination, and creator of BODY WORLDS-The Original Exhibitions of Real Human Bodies-von Hagens (christened Gunther Gerhard Liebchen) was born in 1945, in Alt-Skalden, Posen, Poland-then part of Germany. To escape the imminent and eventual Russian occupation of their homeland, his parents placed the five-day-old infant in a laundry basket and began a six-month trek west by horse wagon. The family lived briefly in Berlin and its vicinity, before finally settling in Greiz, a small town where von Hagens remained until the age of 19.
As a child, he was diagnosed with a rare bleeding disorder that restricted his activities and required long bouts of hospitalization that he says, fostered in him a sense of alienation and nonconformity. At age 6, von Hagens nearly died and was in intensive care for many months. His daily encounters there with doctors and nurses left an indelible impression on him, and ignited in him a desire to become a physician. He also showed an interest in science from an early age, reportedly "freaking out" at the age of twelve during the Russian launch of Sputnik into space. "I was the school authority and archivist on Sputnik," he said.
In 1965, von Hagens entered medical school at the University of Jena, south of Leipzig, and the birthplace of writers Schiller and Goethe. His unorthodox methods and flamboyant personality were remarkable enough to be noted on academic reports from the university. "Gunther Liebchen is a personality who does not approach tasks systematically. This characteristic and his imaginativeness, that sometimes let him forget about reality, occasionally led to the development of very willful and unusual ways of working-but never in a manner that would have harmed the collective of his seminary group. On the contrary, his ways often encouraged his fellow students to critically review their own work."
While at the university, von Hagens began to question Communism and Socialism, and widened his knowledge of politics by gathering information from Western news sources. He later participated in student protests against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. In January, 1969, in the guise of a vacationing student, von Hagens made his way across Bulgaria and Hungary, and on January 7th, attempted to cross the Czechoslovakian border into Austria and freedom. He failed, but made a second attempt the very next day, at another location along the border. This time the authorities detained him. "While I was in detention, a sympathetic guard left a window open for me so that I could escape. I hesitated and couldn't make up my mind, and that decision cost me a great deal," he says. Gunther von Hagens was arrested, extradited to East Germany, and imprisoned for two years. Only 23 years old at the time, the iconoclastic von Hagens was viewed as a threat to the socialist way of life, and therefore in need of rehabilitation and citizenship education. According to the prison records for Gunther Liebchen, "The prisoner is to be trained to develop an appropriate class consciousness so that in his future life, he will follow the standards and regulations of our society. The prisoner is to be made aware of the dangerousness of his way of behaving, and in doing so, the prisoner's conclusions of his future behavior as a citizen of the social state need to be established."
Thirty-six years after his incarceration, Gunther von Hagens finds meaning and even redemption in his lost years. "The deep friendships I formed there with other prisoners, and the terrible aspects of captivity that I was forced to overcome through my fantasy life, helped shape my sense of solidarity with others, my reliance on my own mind and body when denied freedom, and my capacity for endurance. All that I learned in prison helped me later in my life as a scientist."
In 1970, after West Germany's purchase of his freedom, von Hagens enrolled at the University of Lubeck to complete his medical studies. Upon graduation in 1973, he took up residency at a hospital on Heligoland-a duty free island where the access to cheap liquor resulted in a substantial population of alcoholics. A year later, after obtaining his medical degree, he joined the Department of Anesthesiology and Emergency Medicine at Heidelberg University, where he came to a realization that his pensive mind was unsuitable for the tedious routines demanded of an anesthesiologist. In June 1975, he married Dr. Cornelia von Hagens, a former classmate, and adopted her last name. The couple had three children, Rurik, Bera, and Tona.
In 1975, while serving as a resident and lecturer-the start of an eighteen year career at the university's Institute of Pathology and Anatomy-von Hagens invented Plastination, his groundbreaking technology for preserving anatomical specimens with the use of reactive polymers. "I was looking at a collection of specimens embedded in plastic. It was the most advanced preservation technique then, where the specimens rested deep inside a transparent plastic block. I wondered why the plastic was poured and then cured around the specimens rather than pushed into the cells, which would stabilize the specimens from within and literally allow you to grasp it."
He patented the method and over the next six years, von Hagens spent all his energies refining his invention. In Plastination, the first step is to halt decomposition. "The deceased body is embalmed with a formalin injection to the arteries, while smaller specimens are immersed in formalin. After dissection, all bodily fluids and soluble fat in the specimens are then extracted and replaced through vacuum-forced impregnation with reactive resins and elastomers such as silicon rubber and epoxy," he says. After posing of the specimens for optimal teaching value, they are cured with light, heat, or certain gases. The resulting specimens or plastinates assume rigidity and permanence. "I am still developing my invention further, even today, as it is not yet perfect," he says.
During this time, von Hagens started his own company, BIODUR Products, to distribute the special polymers, equipment, and technology used for Plastination to medical institutions around the globe. Currently, more than 400 institutions in 40 countries worldwide use Gunther von Hagens' invention to preserve anatomical specimens for medical instruction. In 1983, Catholic Church figures asked Dr. von Hagens to plastinate the heel bone of St. Hildegard of Bingen, (1090-1179), a beatified mystic, theologian, and writer revered in Germany. His later offer to perform Plastination on Pope John Paul II foundered before serious discussions.
In 1992, von Hagens married Dr. Angelina Whalley, a physician who serves as his Business Manager as well as the designer of the BODY WORLDS exhibitions. A year later, Dr. von Hagens founded the Heidelberg-based Institute for Plastination, which offers plastinated specimens for educational use and for BODY WORLDS, which premiered in Japan in 1995. To date, the exhibitions have been viewed by more than 27 million people, in cities countries across Europe, Asia, and North America. His continued efforts to present the exhibitions, even in the face of opposition and often blistering attacks are, he says, the burden he must bear as a public anatomist and teacher. "The anatomist alone is assigned a specific role-he is forced in his daily work to reject the taboos and convictions that people have about death and the dead. I myself am not controversial, but my exhibitions are, because I am asking viewers to transcend their fundamental beliefs and convictions about our joint and inescapable fate." Apparently determined to exhaust the limits of living in freedom, Dr. von Hagens has made a concerted effort to travel and propagate his interests around the globe. He accepted a visiting professorship at Dalian Medical University in China in 1996, and became director of the Plastination research center at the State Medical Academy in Bishkek/Kyrgyzstan. In 2001, he founded a private company, the Von Hagens Dalian Plastination Ltd., in Dalian, China, which currently employs a staff of 250. In 2004, Dr. von Hagens began a visiting professorship at the New York University College of Dentistry. He is currently in the process of designing the first anatomy curriculum in the United States that will use plastinated specimens in lieu of dissection.
Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS exhibitions are currently showing in North America. "The human body is the last remaining nature in a man made environment," he says. "I hope for the exhibitions to be places of enlightenment and contemplation, even of philosophical and religious self recognition, and open to interpretation regardless of the background and philosophy of life of the viewer." [/box]
I've been intrigued for some time, and it is exciting that Body Worlds is here. Some people find it controversial and disturbing. I'm simply curious..
you?
it looks fascinating! It runs through Monday September 7th- much longer than I initially heard from others. yay!
I must stop listening to others :)
Went to see this in London - absolutely fascinating and so worth going to see if you can.
The only exhibit that was a little disconcerting was a set of embryos that they had plastinised(sp?) at different stages of development. Some of them were in the original mothers womb still too, which was really weird to see.
Amazing to see though, and I 100% agree with you (e:tinypliny) - the inner workings of the human body are the most stunning thing.
Yikes. (e:paul), I didn't consider that possibility. It seems rather extreme. Body-snatching and other shady modes of procuring bodies are one thing but killing people to put them in an exhibition is entirely another...
Sometimes, the families of the poor sell the bodies of their dear ones so that they can survive from the money they get out of that sale. :( Being poor is very painful.
PS: Regardless of the controversies, I am still interested in going.
Ok, now I can see the NYTimes article. It is talking about the 'Bodies.. The Exhibition'. (so far)
yeh, the Premier Exhibitions Inc. is that "Body..The Exhibition" one, right? and not BodyWorks (the one coming here?) At this point, I am not sure what I think. So far, as long as people weren't killed off strictly for this purpose (were they??!!), I'd wouldn't be opposed to having the unclaimed & unidentified ("poor" would not be acceptable excuse for not giving burial if family wants it) dead used for medical/community exhibition.
So, you think you might want to go, (e:paul)? :)
If enough people seem interested, I can see what I can do about organizing something. If not for the discount, then to at least all go together for those that want to? let me see what more information I can get. Anyone who loves to organize stuff, by all means go for it :)
Arnie Geller, the president of Premier Exhibitions Inc., the company that spent $25 million to obtain the specimens from a Chinese university, insists that the human remains, all but two of them male, are those of the poor, the unclaimed or the unidentified. :::link:::
I love how "poor" ranks with unclaimed or unidentified. Notice the lack of an AND. Aren't they kind of different?
They way I understood it was the bodies wouldn't have been dead bodies if they didn't need them for a show.
(e:theecarey), I am super-interested in going. Are you getting together a group of 15 people? If you are, I am 100% in.
(e:paul), I am not sure those claims can be verified. We dissected bodies of cadavers from people who had willingly donated them to our med school. At least, that's what they told us. Who knows...
Even if they were from dead prisoners, a body is just a body without life. I agree that it seems awful to not bury/cremate it etc. but sometimes, the beauty of a human body needs to be witnessed to be believed and preserving it is a mark of deep respect.
I think the human body from inside is perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Yes I am interested. Thanks for the great info. My friends went in NY and said it was a strange yet amazing experience to intellectual realize how our body works and yet see what is just beneath the skin. I haven't decided when to go yet.
hahaha, (e:paul) at "Jenks, isn't that everyday like your own personal bodyworld"
I too has heard about the controversy surrounding the origins of bodies used in the exhibits.From my understanding, "BodyWorld" apparently has consenting donors/people who pay to have their bodies used for this exhibit and other medical needs. Also medical universities donate.
However there is a similar, but unrelated exhibit called, "The Bodies...The Exhibition" which seems to have an unofficial track record for using non-consenting prisoner bodies/questionable sources. They use unclaimed bodies but the sources are undocumented?
wiki on "Bodies...The Exhibition":
:::link:::
NPR discussing both exhibits in an article titled, "Origins of Exhibited Cadavers Questioned"
:::link:::
Jenks, isn't that everyday like your own personal bodyworld.
On a more serious note when we went the las Vegas showing of it everyone said it was horrible of us to go because they shut down the show for using non-consenting prisoner bodies form china? I heard it even got shut down in SF and New York because of that. Maybe its all rumors as I honestly have no substantiated any of it.
dammit! It comes to buffalo as soon as I leave?! I've been wanting to see it for years now.
yep, got a ticket already