On Wednesday I took at trip down to London to see one of the most fantastic art exhibitions I hae ever experienced. The Bodyworlds exhibition combines anatomical science with the human body's natural beauty to give an experience that is as educational as it is entertaining. The exhibition has been surrounded by controversy however. Why? Because the exhibits on display are dead human beings.

Using a technique called "plastination", professor Gunther von Hagens is able to preserve any organic matter from decaying for thousands of years. The technique is very complicated, but in principle is similar to the naturally occurring fossilisation. When something becomes fossilised, the organic structures are replaced by rocks and minerals like quartz or silica. With the plastination technique, the bodily flieds are replaced by polymers such as silicon rubber and epoxy resin. This replacement means that the cadavers will not rot, there is no smell, and the bodies can be "posed" like lifesize action figures. The body is preserved on a microscopic level, meaning that microscopic examinations are still possible. This is a fantastic opportunity to educate people about human anatomy.

The exhibits ranged from a slice through the brain to fully preserved muscular and cardio-vascular systems. Seeing what we really look like under our skin was truly fascinating. Also fascinating (and rather disturbing) was the "diseased" exhibits. A healthy pair of lungs lay in a glass cabinet, their colour a ghostly white. Next to this set of lungs was another set, this time taken from a smoker's corpse. The smoker's lungs were black with tar. Seeing the comparison really hits home the message that smoking screws you up (indeed, something like 20% of all visitors have quit smoking after seeing this exhibit). Other diseased exhibits included a cirrotic liver (caused from alcohol abuse), as well as various tumours and anneurysms.

The most spectacular exhibit consisted of a man riding a horse - both flayed to reveal their muscular structure, and partly opened to reveal internal organs. in his left hand, the rider holds the horse's brain. in his right hand, the rider holds his own brain. This exhibit makes you appreciate that human beings are weak compared to our beasts of burden, yet we make up for this in brain power.

Another wonderful exhibit contained preserved foetuses, showing their development from the embryonic stage through to childbirth, including a fully preserved pregnant woman with a child inside her. There were also preserved babies that didn't make it - an heart wrenching display of birth defects, ranging from siamese twins to spina bifida.

The most intricate of all the displays were the cardio-vascular exhibits. These are prepared by injecting a coloured polymer in to the blood system of the candidate, waiting for the polymer to cure, and then eroding the rest of the organic material with acids. What is left is the web of veins and blood vessels, without the surrounding tissue. Some of the arteries in our bodies are extremely thick, while others taper away no almost nothing. Ever find a "skeleton leaf" in the autumn, where the leaft tissue had decayed, leaving the vein structure behind? Think of that but with human beings.

Beside every exhibit is information on what it is, the function of the body, etc. etc. There is also a full audio guide available which explains all the exhibits in great detail. As I moved from display case to display case, I realised what a valuable tool for eduction this would be. It would no longer be necessary for students to get messy dissecting animals or eyeballs, or learning everything they required through books. With plasticised bodies available to schools for examination everything could b learned from the plastinates.

So is it science or art? Well, it is both. Prof. von Hagens sees himself as a "neo-renaissance" man. Leonardo da Vinci saw the inherant beauty within the human form, and also recognised its scientific merit. The boundaries of science and art were blurred, and that is what von Hagens is attempting to do here. Unfortunately, there are many people who disagree with his ethics.

Every candidate for plastination has freely given their body to medical science and consented to their corpse being made availabel for educational purposes after their death. Gunther von Hagens is not a grave robber. And yet there are numerous people who think that what he is doing is morally wrong. We shall ignore those people who believe everything they read in the press and get easily whiped into a media frenzy, and concentrate on those that actually believe on moral grounds that plastination is wrong. I wonder how many of these people have stuffed animals in their houses. Or wear leather shoes. Is it any different to use an animal's remains for artistic purposes?

And then there are the religious typres. When I first read about the controversy, I expected Christians to be at the forefront of the assault. I was very surprised however, with what I found. It was the PAPACY which allowed human bodies to be made available for scientific research in the first place. With the state of the church today, I always saw them as people who resisted progress and kept secrets from people that may usurp their religion. And yet, a few hundred years ago, the pope declared that human cadavers could be dissected and examined to educate others. Indeed, the vast majority of body donors have been Christian. However, any person that claims the plastination is wrong on religious grounds is essentially declaring that they do not believe what they claim to. If the body is merely a vessel for the soul, and after we die our soul goes to heaven, or hell, or whatever afterlife these people believe in, then what use is the body after death? Surely if you're pissed off to heaven, you're not going to need your tired old corpse any more, are you?

Professor Gunther von Hagens never set out to shock anybody, merely to educate them in his field of expertise. However, in todays ridiculous society, his works have been condemned as evil by many who have not even bothered to visit the exhibition. The only thing I found wrong with Bodyworlds is that there are not enough exhibits to satisfy the craving for more knowledge.

Bodyworlds is on display at the Atlantis Gallery in London until the 29th September 2002. tickets are available from the Bodyworlds website at www.bodyworlds.com for a very reasonable price.

(If you don't see this you really are missing out, so see it while you can.)