Exhibit visitors becoming body donors

Then she saw the intricately plastinated bodies at a California Science Center exhibit — bodies that had been stripped of their fat, filled with plastics and shown off in all their muscular, organic and anatomical glory for the world to see in traveling shows.

Now that, she thought, is the way she wants to go.

“I was so excited,” Toney-Alvarez said of seeing the exhibit with her twin sister, Ernestine Toney-Dixon. “We went to the exhibition hall and we just got so overwhelmed with all this new stuff, and we said, ‘We’re going to donate our bodies!’ “

Toney-Alvarez, 67, and her sister were among 115 future body donors who met Saturday with Dr. Gunther von Hagens, the creator of Body Worlds and the inventor of the plastination technique. Forty-seven others in attendance were friends or relatives of the donors.

Many said they were inspired after seeing Body Worlds’ anatomical exhibitions. The California Science Center hosted the exhibition’s first North American visit, which began in 2004. Since then, Body Worlds has traveled to numerous cities nationwide.

The exhibits feature whole bodies, down to the muscles and organs, that are posed acrobatically. Four Body Worlds tours are rotating among museums in North America, and along the way, hundreds of people have to pledged to donate their bodies for plastination.

According to Dr. Angelina Whalley, Von Hagens’ wife, 8,625 people worldwide have agreed to give their bodies to Von Hagens’ German-based Institute for Plastination. While 85 percent of donors are from Germany, 728 donors are from the United States.

Body Worlds’ American donation program started shortly after the exhibit arrived in Los Angeles and visitors began asking museum staff how they could donate their bodies.

Toney-Alvarez said she was intrigued to see how bodies could be used to teach. She was amazed to see how preserved remains could illustrate how cancer consumes the body and how an aneurysm can kill.

The exhibit also touched a personal nerve. In 2003, Toney-Alvarez lost a sister, Irma Toney-Robinson, 60, to an aneurysm, and her father, Edward Toney, 87, to pancreatic cancer.

Donating her body is one way “you can give back to help the public understand,” she said.

Her mother, Irma Henry, 85, also agreed to donate her body.

“I thought it was a good idea for medical students at first,” Henry said. “Once I looked into it, the first thing that came to mind was how much money I’d save” on funeral expenses.

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