Documenting the Immortal Corpse

Documenting the Immortal Corpse

Top of Mind with Julie Rose

Visible Human, Financial Crisis

Episode: Visible Human, Financial Crisis

  • Jan 11, 2019 11:00 pm
  • 1:39:54 mins

Guest: Vic Spitzer, Visible Human Project Creator, Director of the Center for Human Simulation, University of Colorado; Kurt Mutchler, Senior Science Photo Editor, National Geographic Medical students learn its intricacies studying the cadavers of people who donate themselves to science. But what if there was a virtual cadaver that could be dissected, viewed from different angles and reassembled? That’s the idea behind the Visible Human Project, in which bodies are frozen, sliced thousands of times and photographed after each cut. That is what Susan Potter signed up for: “ That was my last will and testament, to leave something behind that would have an impact on the whole human race.” Before her death in 2015, Susan Potter recorded lots of videos talking about her life, her health, and her involvement with the Visible Human Project. National Geographic documented that story over 16 years, resulting in a short film a stunning interactive story in the magazine’s January 2019 issue.  See National Geographic’s interactive version of The Immortal Corpse here