Hey, mister, do you want my body?

“One day plastinates will rule the world!”

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No, that’s not a quote from a cackling alien with a synthetic brain in the latest summer sci-fi flick. It was written by an enthusiastic visitor in a guest book at “Body Worlds,” an exhibition featuring real human cadavers -- in various graphic stages of dissection for anatomical study -- preserved by a process that replaces body fluids with plastic.

The 25 whole bodies that are among the 200 specimens on display -- which Gunther von Hagens, the German scientist who invented the process, affectionately calls “the plastinates” -- were donated for “Body Worlds,” at the Science Center through Jan. 23.

At previous “Body Worlds” exhibitions in Europe and Asia, forms were provided for body donation, and some 6,000 have signed up since the exhibitions’ 1995 debut in Tokyo. Among the more than 35,000 L.A. visitors since “Body Worlds” opened, quite a few have expressed interest in becoming donors, Science Center President Jeffrey N. Rudolph says (“Take Me!” wrote one in the guest book).

But despite previously announced plans to provide the forms here, Rudolph says the center won’t be offering the necessary paperwork just yet. “I think it was just something they weren’t ready to do yet,” he says of exhibition organizers. “They are going through all the proper work with attorneys to make sure their work is consistent with U.S. laws; each country is slightly different.”

Rudolph adds that among questions being debated is whether future U.S. donors would be shipped to Von Hagens’ plastination facilities in Germany, China and Kyrgyzstan, or whether a new facility would be established in the U.S.

Either way, the Science Center would take no position on body donation, Rudolph says, but “we’re happy to provide information to people.”

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Diane Haithman