A firm known for lifelike preservation and display of human bodies declared through its attorneys that articles speculating that its Body Worlds exhibit includes the plastinated body of Zhang Weijie, a former Dalian news anchor and former mistress of disgraced Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, is “false and defamatory”.
On August 29 a law firm claiming to represent Gunther von Hagens and his Plastination Company, Inc., sent a message through Goldsea’s contact form stating:
“The Article is false and defamatory. Among other things, it states or implies that the exhibition of plastinated human bodies presented by Plastination Company, Inc. and Dr. von Hagens and known as Body Worlds includes the plastinated body of Zhang Weijie, the former mistress of Chinese politician Bo Xilai.
“That statement is completely false. The statement also defames and causes serious injury to Dr. von Hagens and Plastination Company, Inc.”
The message goes on to demand a retraction and deletion of the article published on Goldsea under threat of a law suit.
Goldsea’s August 19 article discussed speculation contained in articles published on various digital media — including the overseas Chinese-language news site Boxun earlier this month and on the Taiwanese site WantChina Times — that the body of a pregnant woman on display by Body Worlds may be that of the former Bo mistress.
These source articles offered various circumstantial evidence to support this speculation which were reported on the Goldsea article.
The skull shape and other features of the pregnant woman’s body at the Body Worlds exhibit closely resembles those of Zhang, according to Boxun. Also, the nearly mature fetus inside the pregnant woman suggests the woman had been the victim of an officially sanctioned execution.
Upon learning of the affair and of Zhang’s pregnancy, Gu Kailai, wife of then Dalian mayor Bo Xilai, is rumored to have used security officials to hound, then detain Zhang. After making a desperate but futile effort to publicize her plight, Zhang is said to have suffered a nervous breakdown, then disappeared from public view. Her whereabouts remain unknown.
The speculations about the link between Bo and Body Worlds is also based on the overlap between Bo’s term as mayor of Dalian in the mid to late 1990s and the registration of von Hagens’ Plastination Company in Dalian in 1999, as well as the timing of Zhang’s disappearance at around that time. Some netizens have suggested that Bo himself may have approved von Hagen’s registration application. The company is said to have been founded in Dalian because at that time China had no laws banning the processing and export of corpses, and the Body Worlds exhibit had used bodies from Dalian.
“It’s difficult to see how these article could be defamatory of a company that’s in the business of plastinating dead people,” said a Goldsea legal adviser. “The article doesn’t suggest that von Hagens used any illegal or morally reprehensible means to obtain its bodies. There’s no suggestion of complicity in any wrongdoing.”
Ironically, von Hagens, who now lives in California, has been on the other end of a defamation action filed by a rival plastinator in February of 2010 after von Hagens had appeared on 20/20 to discuss his industry.
Von Hagens told reporter Brian Ross in the interview that his company uses only bodies from Europeans and Americans who voluntarily consented to being plastinated. He also admitted to having used bodies from China but stopped using them after learning they were probably executed prisoners. After that interview he was sued by Arnie Geller, former head of Premier Exhibitions Inc. in a Tampa court.
Geller’s company had been the focus of a 2008 TV report about the practice of displaying executed prisoners. Apparently taking von Hagen’s statemens to be implying that Geller’s firm had used prisoners, Geller filed suit against von Hagens and his Plastination Company Inc. for providing “defamatory, inflammatory and false statements” to Brian Ross on ABC’s 20/20. Geller alleged in the suit that he only used the bodies of people who died from natural causes.
“Von Hagen’s statement on 20/20 clearly shows that he suspects his own company of having used executed prisoners in his exhibits, so he can’t complain that these articles may imply that he may have done so while he was in Dalian,” added Goldsea’s legal adviser.
A glimpse of the highly lucrative and competitive business of displaying plastinated bodies emerged in the form of testimony by von Hagen’s former plastination technician Dequiang Sun in the 2010 lawsuit. Sun testified that he received a 10,000 euro bonus from von Hagen for falsely telling ABC News that von Hagen’s main rival Sui Hongjin had used the bodies of executed prisoners.
Gunther von Hagens had acquired the nickname of “Dr. Death” for inventing the plastination process which involves injecting plastics into a cadaver’s circulatory system to prevent their decomposition. Sui Hongjin had been trained by von Hagens before leaving to form his own business of supplying bodies to Geller’s Premier Exhibitions. Sui has denied ever having used the bodies of executed prisoners, telling reporters that all bodies he provided to Premier Exhibitions came from “medical universities and the Chinese coroner’s office, and all the individuals died of natural causes.”
Von Hagens had introduced Deqiang Sun to ABC News for the 2008 interview. He denied ever encouraging or paying his technician to lie. He speculated that Sun may have changed his story out of “fear” of prosecution by Chinese authorities.
Von Hagen declined to comment on Sun’s allegations that he was ordered by von Hagens in 2005 to concoct phony petitions and letters of protest that were sent to officials in Florida in an effort to stop Premier’s body exhibition from opening.
Gunther Von Hagens and his Plastination Company Inc is now based in Beverly Hills, California.
