All about the body

Twenty-eight Weber State University students, a few of them parents, headed to Salt Lake City last Tuesday to experience Body Worlds, an exhibit of the human body. Kraig Chugg, a WSU Health Science Professor who teaches biomedical core and pathophysiology took a group of his students to the exhibit, so they could see in real life what their textbooks tell them in the classroom at WSU. "The best part is seeing the broader scope," Chugg said. "The things we look at are easier to see in this format than in a traditional cadaver." The exhibit, located at the Leonardo in downtown Salt Lake City, displays more than 200 authentic human specimens for observers to look at and gain a greater understanding of how their body works. People donate their bodies, posthumous, to the scientific exhibit for others to view them, understand how their body works and see what humans look like on the inside. The exhibit focuses on the heart and its functions. It uses the art of plastination, which is a process to preserve the human body, so it does not decay. It uses a vacuum process where the body's water and fat content are replaced with fluid plastic, which hardens to retain all tissue structures. It takes an average of 1,500 hours to make a body into a plastinate. The exhibit not only displays human bodies and how they work, it also shows the effects on the body from various cancers, smoking and tumors. Shawna Carroll, a WSU junior who is majoring in health information management, said the exhibit helped her understand her biomedical core class better. "You've learned about it your whole life, and you might study it one piece at a time, but it's good to see it all together and how it works together," she said. "Especially when you can dissect it and see it layer by layer instead of always looking at a picture. Olivia Racker, a dental hygiene freshman, said the best part of the exhibit for her was being able to see the inside of the body and what it really is. "It helps you see how your whole body works," she said. Overall, Carroll said the experience was beneficial, and that she learned a lot from it. "It helps with depth," she said. "Like actually seeing how thick your muscles are." But the exhibit isn't just for medical students. Racker and Carroll both recommended the exhibit to any student, and Chugg also said he would recommend it to anyone without question. "It doesn't take a lot of medical knowledge to relate to some of this stuff, because people know things like heart disease and some of these other diseases," Chugg said. "So it's not hard to relate." The cost for tickets is $19.50 for students, and the exhibit is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.