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State board to consider ethical issues of 'Bodies'

MOSI's exhibit must pass muster with the Anatomical Board of Florida.

By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published August 11, 2005

	Photo gallery

TAMPA - When Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry officials first proposed "Bodies, The Exhibition" to Hillsborough County commissioners, they touted an ethics committee of medical and religious leaders who would review their plan.

But members of the ethics committee said they never had a special meeting to discuss the exhibit containing 20 fully preserved cadavers.

And they never considered whether the people whose bodies are scheduled to go on display next week had given their permission.

"I guess we just didn't have the time to get together and make a big thing out of it," said Gladys Shafran Kashdin, a MOSI ethics committee member and professor emerita of humanities at the University of South Florida. "But we do know where we stand."

Today, the museum will find out where the Anatomical Board of Florida stands, which has challenged MOSI to provide release forms from the donor or person giving consent for public display of the body after it has been donated to science.

But MOSI officials have said the bodies belonged to individuals in China who died unidentified and unclaimed by family. Their bodies went to China's Dalian Medical University of Plastination Laboratories, which charges a fee to use the cadavers for education. So the signed consent forms don't exist.

The Anatomical Board is a state organization that oversees anatomical materials for research and teaching in Florida. It has said MOSI must get its permission before opening the exhibit on Aug. 20. Lynn Romrell, executive director of the Anatomical Board, will meet with MOSI and exhibit officials this afternoon at its University of Florida office in Gainesville.

Lois LaCivita Nixon, a bioethicist and USF medical humanities professor on the committee, said informed consent should have been a "guiding principle" for Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta, the company bringing "Bodies, The Exhibition" to MOSI.

"It's amazing that someone who is part of Western civilization . . . that they didn't make that an essential part" of creating the exhibit, Nixon said. "I find that very bothersome."

Nonetheless, Nixon said the bodies will be displayed in a "very respectful way."

She expressed mixed feelings about MOSI's exhibit opening without having consent from the individuals on display or their families.

"Would I say close the door and throw these bodies away?" she asked. "I think it's an important exhibit. People are concerned about the informed consent and that should be the prevailing question. If it were left to me to stop the exhibit, I would not."

Still, she added, "I can't imagine that this kind of exhibit could be produced in the future without donated bodies with consent."

"I wish we knew whether or not these people decided while they were living to donate their bodies," said Lawrence Morehouse, a USF government and international affairs professor and MOSI ethics committee member. "I just don't see any harm that would come from such an exhibit. Imagine, you live with your body every day, and there are other folks who know more about your body than you do."

Committee member Monsignor Laurence Higgins said he did not know that there were no consent forms for the cadavers. But he stands by MOSI in bringing the exhibit. And he thinks the individuals that will be displayed would approve, if they could.

"All I could think of is if they knew their bodies would help other people, they'd be all for it," Higgins said.

[Last modified August 11, 2005, 00:42:17]