Human bodies go on display at Discovery Park of America

UNION CITY, Tenn. — A new exhibit at Discovery Park of America in Union City gives visitors an up-close look at the human body.

“Nothing can prepare you for it,” Education Specialist Russell Orr said. “They can expect to have their lives changed.”

Bodies Revealed allows visitors to see inside a carefully preserved, real human body. Discovery Park of America CEO Jim Rippy said you can’t explain it without seeing it. “The bodies have been turned to a plastic type product that will not decay or go away,” he said.

Orr said these people donated their bodies to science and come from medical schools in China.

“You can examine the entire body from the skeleton to the nervous system and all the different parts of the body,” Rippy said.

The exhibit covers all different parts of the body, but also compares healthy organs with diseased organs. People can see a healthy liver next to a liver with cancer and compare a smoker’s lungs to healthy lungs.

“I hope people will have a better understanding of how unique their body is,” Rippy said.

Visitors can look but not touch. “It will take your breath away when you come inside,” Orr said. “There’s nothing else like it.”

Bodies Revealed opens to the public Friday and runs through May 1.

Experts said a small organ can take a week to preserve and that preparing a whole body can take up to a year.