Plastinator

Even those who donate their bodies to the plastinator can only have fantasies, based on their experience of viewing the bodies of others, about what it will be like to have their dead bodies placed on view for others to look at.

From my perspective plastinated specimens are not works of art, because they have been created for the sole purpose of sharing insights into human anatomy ... a plastinator is at most a skilled laborer in the field of art, but not an artist as such.

The magazine obtained a letter marked December 2001 in which one of von Hagen's Chinese plastinators, Dr. Hongjin, boasted that he had just obtained the bodies of a “young man and young woman” who had “died” that same morning.