Medical Museums: scholastic, or just sickening?

Dr Simon Chaplin is director of culture and society at London's Wellcome Trust, the world's second largest non-governmental funder of medical research, and co-founder of the Human Genome Project. Prior to joining Wellcome, Chaplin was Director of Museums and Special Collections at the Royal College of Surgeons. His academic research interests include the history of anatomy and medical museums. He is about to come to Auckland as a keynote speaker at a colloquium that will debate a proposed Medical Museum for Auckland. The colloquium will also coincide with the Body Worlds exhibition currently on in Auckland, which has been criticised for objectifying the dead and exploiting the human taste for the macabre under the guise of education.