Body donor visits display that may one day include her

Angie Day looked her future in the face Saturday during her visit to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Day, 36, recently donated her body to the company behind "Body Worlds & The Story of The Heart" to be used in the company's anatomical displays after she dies.

On Saturday, she drove from her home in Melbourne to get a look at the show that one day will display her mortal remains to the public. Where her fellow visitors solemnly surveyed displays of disembodied organs or preserved bodies frozen in motion, Day pictured herself.

"Maybe I could be reading a book or maybe I could be running because I like to do those things," Day said, standing by a display of a ski-jumping body split down the middle. "I don't like to ski."

Day said she decided to donate her body after visiting a similar exhibit in Chicago two years ago. Day expects to wait a long time before surrendering her body to Body Worlds. She's young and in good health.

"Some people are grossed out or would have no interest in this," Day said. "But the human body is something that's always fascinated me."

The human body is revealed in vivid detail in Body Works, an exhibit created by German anatomist Gunter von Hagen. The show at MOSI closes June 28 before moving to Buffalo, N.Y.

Von Hagen preserves the bodies used in his shows through a process he calls "plastination." The slowly impregnates a body's soft tissues with plastic.

The visitors to the exhibit Saturday were largely quiet as they milled among Plexiglass cases holding individual preserved organs and large-as-life displays of human bodies stripped of skin to reveal muscles and organs in various poses.

Body Worlds officials stress their displays are derived from voluntarily donated bodies - a counterpoint to an earlier MOSI exhibit, "Bodies: The Exhibit," that was overshadowed by claims the bodies may have come from the homeless, the poor or from executed prisoners in China.

Near the end of the Body Worlds display, visitors find directions on how to donate their bodies to the show. So far, at least 10,000 people worldwide have taken the plunge, according to Body Worlds officials.

Day carries in her purse a simple paper card with the contact information for a California embalmer should anything happen to her.

Day acknowledges her decision called for some deeper-than-usual thinking about death and dying. She recently confronted the death of her father to cancer and of her brother in a motorcycle accident.

"Death is something we're all going to face," she said. "It's really interesting to think that some day people may be looking at me in a museum. What's the point of sitting around in a box?"