This weekend, an exhibition opens at Sydney’s Moore Park’s Byron Kennedy Hall named ‘Real Bodies’, and to quote Wayne’s World: it’s not just a clever name.

The exhibition contains twenty actual human bodies, and around 200 body parts.

However, while Dalian Medical University Biology Plantation in China, who supplied the cadavers, insist the entire thing is above board, news.com.au report that things may not be so above board.

“There are grave concerns that the bodies were not freely and willingly donated”, says spokesperson Sophia Bryskine, from Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.

“The origins of these bodies have been questioned and believed to come from China — either death row prisoners, or as suspected by independent investigators, tortured prisoners of conscience.

“Falun Gong practitioners have been singled out as the most likely victims.”

(Read more about this horrendous practice here)

Dalian Medical University’s Professor of Anatomy, Hong Jin Sui, counters this argument, writing in a statement that the bodies came from the city morgue, were transferred to various medical universities in China, and “ultimately were legally donated to the Dalian Hoffen Bio-technique Laboratory preservation, dissection and exhibition”.

He denies they were torture victims.

“Dalian Hoffen Bio-technique only accepts specimens that have been legally donated, are free of infectious disease and certified to have died of natural causes.”

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine