Dead bodies in Prague's Lucerna stir emotions

Dead bodies in Prague's Lucerna stir emotions By HA / HOSPODÁŘSKÉ NOVINY / Published 10 May 2007 Translated with permission by Monitor CE for the Prague Daily Monitor

Is it scandalous to display modified dead human bodies? According to a number of Czech doctors, teachers and politicians it is. They stepped into a line to protest against the exposition of "Bodies.The Exhibition," which opened in Prague's Lucerna hall on Saturday.

Boris Šťastný (ODS), deputy chairman of the Health Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, said he considered the exhibition barbaric and he called for its immediate enclosure.

The travelling international exposition of human skeletons, coated partially by nerves and postured in positions typical for daily life or athletic poses, has already been visited by 16 million viewers all over the world.
Prague is the first city in the former Eastern bloc countries where the exposition has been displayed.

The Czech Anatomical Society and individual pathologists voiced objections to the exposition. However, several hundreds visitors took the opportunity to see it in the first few days.

University teacher and Roman Catholic priest Tomáš Halík denounced the exhibition. He said he opposes not only the collection itself, but also participation by medical students at its presentation. He sent an open letter to Charles University Rector Václav Hampl, calling attendance by members of academia at such a "barbaric event" scandalous. He said that their presence gave the cloak of an educational happening to this "insult of humane traditions of our culture."

Jiří Bajer, a student in the fifth grade at the Medical Faculty of Charles University, who is to guide the exposition, said that a number of the specimens captured his interest. He said that he had an opportunity to see things that as a medical student he had never seen at dissections.

The organizers say they do not plan to close the controversial exhibition, scheduled to continue through 28 October. They say that the producers of the exposition have encountered similar protests in other countries where the exposition opened.

The producers are expected to run into more inconveniences here. The issue of the exposition is to be taken up by Prague 1 town hall representatives and by hygienists. The town hall is to deal with a formal complaint of one Radek Mikula, who charges that the exposition violates burial law.

Originally published in Czech in Hospodáŕské noviny and translated into English by Monitor CE.
Re-published in the Prague Daily Monitor in cooperation with iHNed.cz.