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This education-rich exhibition is made possible through the process of Polymer Preservation, a process that consists of several essential steps.
First, a human body must be obtained through a legal, willed body donation program. These programs exist around the world and serve to provide anatomical material that assists medical and scientific communities in their ongoing research and educational endeavors. Willed body donation is an anonymous process with donor names universally withheld to protect the privacy of the individual donors and their families. Once obtained each donated body is embalmed according to standard mortuary practices. During this process the body is perfused with a preserving agent like formalin to prevent normal tissue decay.
After a body is embalmed a trained dissector is employed to prepare it, or some part of it, according to predetermined guidelines, so that it may best educate and inform the general public and a medical audience. Because of the detailed work involved in the dissection on a full body specimen, this stage of the process may take several months to complete; individual organs can be prepared much more quickly.
Once dissection of the body/specimen is completed, it is thoroughly rinsed in cold running water. This helps cleanse it of as much of the preserving agent as possible. Rinsing a specimen the size of a whole body can take up to one week to complete.
The dissected and washed body/specimen is now ready to be dehydrated. This is accomplished by submersing it in acetone, a highly volatile chemical that, through the process of normal diffusion, acts to replace all of the tissue water in the specimen. Acetone is the perfect dehydrating agent for the process of Polymer Preservation because of its high vapor pressure, a characteristic that will facilitate its leaving the specimen when it is subsequently placed under vacuum.
Next, the acetone-saturated body/specimen is placed in an impregnating solution that consists of a mixture of liquid silicone polymer and crosslinker. The impregnation solution of silicone polymer and crosslinker is now placed into a vacuum chamber where it is subjected to a gradual increase in vacuum pressure. As the vacuum pressure increases, the acetone leaves the specimen in the form of a gas and is replaced by the polymer-crosslinker mixture. This seamless transfer creates a specimen that is now completely impregnated with liquid silicone even down to the cellular level. This step in the Polymer Preservation process can take from several hours to an entire week depending on the size of the specimen being impregnated. The crosslinker is an important component of the impregnating solution, as its presence will eventually allow the liquid silicone to be hardened during the final stage of the process known as curing.
Now completely impregnated with liquid silicone, the body/specimen must finally be cured to allow for its permanent educational display. During this process a special chemical agent, called a catalyst, is applied to the exterior of the specimen. The catalyst reacts chemically with the crosslinker in the specimen causing the liquid silicone polymer to harden (repolymerize). Either before or after the specimen is cured it can be selectively colored to make it more suitable for public display.
The end product of the Polymer Preservation process is a dry, odorless specimen that resists decomposition thus allowing its user to create a unique collection of permanently preserved human specimen for public exhibition.
by Dr. Roy Glover, Medical Director