The most macabre thing I've heard this year...

We have a friend staying with us for a few days who is attending an orthopedic surgeon's conference. We were chatting last night about the layperson's knowledge of medical procedures and anatomy, and how it has improved due to things like the Internet, Wikipedia, etc. He agreed.

I cited the 'Bodies' exhibit as another example. Alisa and I went to see it a number of months back. He said he had ethical issues with the exhibit and I asked why.

"Well, did you notice anything that all the subjects had in common?"

I thought about it, but my wife beat me to the conclusion.

"They're all Chinese"

Oh my. So I checked wikipedia and of course there's a great deal of controversy about the questionable origin of the cadavers used in these exhibits. Here's the money shot right here:

The cadavers were donated for research by the Chinese government, because all the bodies at the time of death allegedly had no close next of kin or immediate families to claim the bodies.

And

Due to the fact that the cadavers featured in the exhibition are Chinese in origin, critics suspect that some or all of the bodies may be those of Chinese political prisoners or Falun Gong practitioners, who may have been subject to arrest and execution without due process, in order to be sold as cadavers

Makes me regret giving them my money, as well as being so ignorant about the issue in the first place.