Constructing a Body of Knowledge

There’s a greyhound’s heart, a cat’s spinal cord, a smoker’s lung. A human female torso and head sliced into 1-inch sections from head to waist, completely preserved -- all touchable, teachable.

The Plastination Lab is one of Orange Coast College’s more interesting places.

On a recent tour, a group of high school students had the chance to touch the human torso -- which Ann Harmer, an anatomy professor, calls “Bernadette” -- and check out a baby dolphin being prepared for plastination. Tour director Naomi Nungaray offered a bit of understatement: “They don’t get to see that on a regular basis,” she said.

The lab, which opened in 1994, is believed to be the only one in the nation at a community college.

It opened after a student visited a plastination lab in San Diego. He returned to Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa “just ranting and raving” about the wonders of the technique, and urged Harmer and others to look into it.

They went to a conference at Chaffee College in Ontario attended by experts from all over the world. They learned that the process was fairly simple, and that all they needed -- in addition to facilities and supplies -- was a $15 license from German plastination inventor Gunther von Hagens and a handbook on how to do it. The college could use honors students to work in the lab.

When professors returned from the conference, Harmer said, they were ranting and raving too. They secured a $58,000 grant from the Hoag Family Foundation that got them started.

They also needed to find a room for the lab. Coincidentally, there was one available.”It had all the amenities, shall we say, of a plastination lab,” Harmer said. “Concrete floors, big sinks.”

Now it’s home to huge freezers, where specimens are stored, and shelves lined with plastinated organs and body parts.

“It’s kinda gross,” said Laura Lighter, 17, one of the touring students from Coast High School in Huntington Beach. “But it’s interesting too.”

For Harmer, it has transformed the way she teaches.

“Usually when you have a specimen, it’s floating in a jar of formaldehyde,” Harmer said. “It gets cloudy. The tissue is damaged. It’s toxic. It’s drippy. It’s smelly. It’s not student-friendly. This is different, because they can hold it in their hands. With plastination ... you can carry it around in your suitcase if you want.”

For example, for 10 years Harmer had been teaching a class on cross-sectional anatomy, using pictures. Now, she reaches over to Bernadette and pulls out a slice of her body. “When what you’re looking at is real, it has a whole different effect,” she said.

The lab is filled with interesting specimens. A healthy liver, a fatty liver, a liver filled with tumors. A heart after a bypass operation, healthy lungs, and lungs black from nicotine and tar. There are healthy bones and bones weakened by osteoporosis -- even what Harmer called “the mother of all gallstones,” about the size of a walnut.

It’s also a quick lesson in healthful eating and living.

The lab has kept itself funded working on projects for museums like the California Science Center and the Air and Space Museum. Other projects include plastinated dog and cat livers for veterinarians, a horse leg for a farrier, and a perch and crab for biology classes. The lab is currently working on two dolphins for a marine science class.

The plastination process can take weeks. Specimens are first soaked in formaldehyde, then dehydrated by immersion in cold acetone, which gradually takes the place of water in the tissue. Then they’re submerged in a liquid polymer inside a vacuum chamber, a process that effectively replaces the acetone with plastic. Finally, they’re cured.

Slices are made with a band saw while the specimen is frozen.

Many examples of plastination, such as those on display in the “Body Worlds” exhibit at California Science Center in Los Angeles, have stirred controversy.

Depending on the polymer used, the look and feel of the specimen vary. Silicone is often used for thick body and organ slices; epoxy resins are used for thin, almost translucent slices.

“It’s just pretty,” Harmer said. “But I’m weird; what can I say?”